Something of unearthly love
by DeGlace
Summary: Ino finds a head. The head won't shut up. Then she finds the rest of him. Hidan x Ino.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** Something light, cracky, and fluffy, for your reading pleasure. AU after the time-skip, featuring the gorgeous Ino somewhere in her mid-twenties, which puts Hidan somewhere in his early thirties.

But those are details. Mostly I just wanted to shove two obnoxious loudmouths together and see what would happen.

 **Cover art:** commissioned from evartandadam and used with permission.

VVV

 _Be not inhospitable to strangers,  
Lest they be angels in disguise.  
_\- W.B. Yeats

It's not that Ino isn't a helpful person. She is. She just prefers to help people on her own terms, you know, terms that don't involve wading knee-deep in swamp-muck, harvesting waterlilies.

But such is life; you don't always get to help people by staying dry and dressing stylishly. Sometimes you have to wear hideous yellow waders. Sometimes you have to help your random cousin set up her random flower shop in a random village in the middle of nowhere, and she has a sad inventory of boring flowers, so…

So, waterlilies. The lotus. The symbol of perfect beauty. Not unlike Ino herself, except Ino doesn't grow in stagnant water that smells like poo. And leeches. And leech poo.

So anyway, Ino is in a foul mood. And then, to further her annoyance, someone talks to her.

"Hello?" says an oddly muffled man's voice.

Ino straightens up and scans her surrounds, because no-one in this literal backwater should have the skills to sneak up on a kunoichi of her caliber. Except, someone did. But she can't see the someone.

"Down here. Are you _blind_?"

Ino blinks and looks down and sees absolutely nothing at her feet but reeds and a heap of muddy rocks lying partially submerged in water.

"Oh, you _are_ blind. You have, like, no pupils. My bad."

So one of the rocks is talking to her. And insulting her beautiful, fathomless, otherworldly eyes. Ino crouches down. Is it a river spirit, or someone's lost summon, or a joke?

"I don't know what you are," says Ino, "but I already hate you."

" _Here_ ," says the voice, and Ino is finally close enough that she can isolate its provenance to one rock in particular, a medium one, mud-crusted, and smelling particularly of leech poo.

Then the rock blinks at her, and she sees that it has eyes – actual eyes – that shine like glorious amethysts in the afternoon sun, amidst a thick crust of swamp-shit.

"What are you?" asks Ino, tilting her head curiously to one side. "Besides ugly, I mean."

The stone scoffs at her. "Wow. Blindness _confirmed_."

Ino contemplates the stone and pokes it with a fingertip. "You know, I've always wanted a pet rock."

"I'm not a rock," says the rock with some degree of agitation.

"I think I'll take you home and put you on my shelf," says Ino.

"I'm a _man_."

"A man."

"Yes."

Ino looks upon the rock with pity. "Okay. I'll humor you and your wild delusions. Where's the rest of you?"

"You know, I'm _real_ fuckin' glad you asked," says the rock. "I have no idea. You're going to help me find my body."

"Am I, now?"

" _Yes_ , you are" says the rock with a strength of confidence that Ino had not previously thought rocks capable of. "You were obviously sent to me for that purpose."

"Sent to you."

"Yes. By Jashin."

"I don't know her."

"He's a he, and he's god."

"… Right," says Ino, standing up and wiping her hands. "I think we're done here. Missionary rocks. I've obviously inhaled too much swamp gas."

"Don't try to deny it. You were sent here by his divine hand!"

"Goodbye," says Ino.

She slips her basket of dripping waterlilies on her arm and her sunhat on her head and squelches away.

And the rock shouts at her to wait, first authoritatively, and then with progressively more panic – "Wait. _Wait._ Wait!… Stop!"

Ino looks over her shoulder.

"Don't go. _Please_ ," whines the rock.

Ino stops. "So you do have some manners."

"That's right. I do. Please, thank you, you're welcome. Come back here. You're a nice bitch. I mean, nice… girl. You've got to help me. I've been here forever. No-one ever comes here, and it's so _boring_ , and it smells like ass."

"I really don't see what's in it for me," says Ino, her gaze drifting homewards.

"I'll be your pet rock! I'll be a good pet."

Ino sniffs and looks at the rock. "You already have a bad attitude. Are you house-trained?"

The rock glares at her, a surprise of violet violence amidst the mud.

"What do you even eat? Do I need to buy gerbil pellets or something?" says Ino, lifting the rock by nasty root-things sticking out of it.

"Ouch, you fuckhead. That's my hair."

"Oops," says Ino. Then she gets a whiff of the rock. "Ugh. You really do smell like ass. I'm going to dunk you in the water now."

So Ino splashes the thing about in the water and rinses off most of the caked-on dirt, and she finds that it is really not a rock at all, but an actual head, with white-blond hair and a foul mouth currently opening and closing in water-muffled outrage as she gleefully waterboards it.

"Wow," says Ino, contemplating this strange phenomenon. "You're actually a decapitated head. How are you not dead?"

"I'm immortal," says the head. " _Duh_."

"Cool," says Ino, holding the head at eye-level and getting a good look at it. "Hello, head. I'm Ino."

"Dumb name," says the head, giving Ino a once-over. "Suits you. I'm Hidan."

Ino stares at the head pensively in the wake of this fresh insult. "Well, Hidan, I think I'm going to drop-kick you back into the marsh."

"No no no," says the head quickly. "Please don't, nice girl, nice Ino. I'll be good. Take me home. Feed me pellets, whatever. Just get me the fuck out of here."

"Only because you're the first interesting thing that's happened since I got here," says Ino. She narrows her eyes at him. "Don't make me regret it."

"Oh, you won't regret it," says the head. "Not one bit. You're doing Jashin's work, you know, helping me. Maybe I'll even sacrifice you to him, afterwards."

"…Right," says Ino.

She puts the head in her basket, among the sodden waterlilies, and splashes her way home.

VVV

It is in a small, quaint hamlet nestled in a valley between two mountains that Ino's cousin Kiku has settled and decided to set up shop. And Ino was volunteered – voluntold – to help her out, because of family obligations or some crap like that. It's not altogether as bad as it could be; she gets a whole summer off of heavy ninja duties in Konoha, and she has found herself a summer fling, a dreamy farmer with bulging forearms, to keep her occupied during the long summer nights…

This random talking head that she found, though – it just made things a whole hell of a lot more _interesting_.

Upon arrival at her small apartment above cousin Kiku's fledgling flower shop, Ino gives the Hidan thing another rinse in the bathtub, because he still stinks, and she washes his mouth with soap for good measure, because it is foul on several levels, and he tries to bite her, and she smacks him and tells him to behave himself or she'll toss him back into the marsh.

This threat calms him down significantly and he chooses to sulk instead.

Ino perches the head on a towel on top of the microwave and makes herself a stir-fry for supper under his watchful glower.

"Snap pea?" offers Ino, holding one up.

"I was told there would be pellets," says the head grumpily.

Ino rolls her eyes and tosses the snap pea into her wok.

"There's no point in eating, anyway," says the head. "Whatever I eat is just gonna fall out the bottom."

"Aren't you going to die of starvation?"

"Do I look like I'm dying of starvation?"

"I guess not."

"Right. So stop asking me dumb questions like a dumb bitch."

Ino tilts her head, chews on a carrot slice, and considers him. "I wonder if you'll fit down the toilet, if I flush hard enough."

"Probably not," says the Hidan thing quickly. "But let's not try. Sorry for calling you a dumb bitch, you dumb… fuck, I hate having to behave myself."

Ino sets her food on the kitchen table and places the head across from her, nestled into its towel.

"There," she says, seating herself across from him. "Now it just feels like I'm eating dinner with a really short guy."

"I'm not short," says Hidan. "I'm almost six feet tall."

"Inches, I think you mean," says Ino sweetly.

" _Feet_ ," says Hidan. "You little b– …god damn. I'm going to stop talking to you now."

He resumes his sulk and Ino eats her dinner under his spiteful violet stare, which is amusing and unsettling all at once. This Hidan thing is very emotive and obnoxious and loud, and there's only, what, ten percent of him here? Ino pities the poor saps that have had to endure the full brunt of his person.

"So," says Ino when she has finished eating and Hidan looks like he's ready to stop pouting. "Tell me. What happened to the rest of you?"

"I had a fight. I got… dismembered. And decapitated. I thought that would've been goddamn obvious."

"Did you fight somewhere around here?" asks Ino. "I didn't see signs of a skirmish…"

"Nah," says Hidan. "In Cloud somewhere. Months ago. Guy had some fast fuckin' swords."

"Cloud," repeats Ino, her eyebrows rising. "You know that's, like, ten thousand miles from here."

"I know," says Hidan. "He threw me down a waterfall, piece by piece… I floated down a bunch of rivers and eventually rolled into that shithole swamp thing where you found me. Where's here?"

"Village of Kurashiki," says Ino. "Country of Fire. Population, 345. Well, 346 if we count me – and 346.1, if we count you."

"Well, shit."

"Yeah. And none of those 345 people ever pick waterlilies. You're lucky I found you."

Hidan scoffs. "Luck? It's fate. Divine providence. Obviously."

Ino looks cynical in the extreme, because she doesn't believe in that kind of stuff.

"Jashin sent you to find me," continues the head with self-righteous piousness. "My god's hand guides these things. Now you're gonna help me find the rest of me. Or he'll smite the fuck out of you."

Ino laughs, because she's being threatened by a talking head on a towel and his imaginary god.

The head now looks profoundly offended.

"I know he sent you. Don't deny it. You know how I know?"

"How?" asks Ino, humoring him for the sake of conversation.

"Because Jashin is all about _killing_. And what were you doing?"

"Picking waterlilies?"

"Exactly. Killing flowers."

"That… _really_ seems like a stretch," says Ino.

The comment nevertheless gives her pause, because in all of her years of experience with flowers, she has never thought about it in those blunt terms.

"Lives are lives," says Hidan.

"You're right, of course," says Ino expressionlessly. "I'm a serial killer. How didn't I see it before."

"Listen," says Hidan with a look of saintly patience. "We all start somewhere. Me, I killed some annoying neighbours. You, flowers. That's fine. You'll need to up the ante on your sacrifices eventually, though. You gotta move on to bigger things to make Jashin happy – like people. Dead people make him happy."

Ino reaches over and pets Hidan on the top of the head. "Listen, little guy. I'm going to stop you there. I'll help you find your missing body parts, if you want – if they're not too out of the way. But I'm not joining your dumb religion, and I'm not killing people. I do enough of that in my day job. Okay?"

"What's your day job?" asks Hidan with sudden suspicion.

"Ninja," says Ino. "Ninja _extraordinaire_."

"A kunoichi?" says Hidan. "You?"

Ino raises an eyebrow in a perfect inquisitive curve. "Hard to believe?"

"Yeah, actually. What do you do, _pretty_ people to death?"

"Sometimes," says Ino, because it's the truth.

"Wouldn't work on me," says Hidan scornfully. "That shit doesn't distract me."

If he'd had a body, Ino might have taken that as a challenge, because what man has ever told her no, really, when she's had some time to work on him…

But he doesn't have a body, so the point is kind of moot.

"I do have _some_ other talents," says Ino with a smirk. "When the pretty isn't enough."

"Is it something to do with your weird blind-girl eyes?" asks Hidan.

Ino has never learned to take insults well. She has, however, learned to _hide_ the fact that she can't take insults well. So she gives him a gentle smile as she decides that it's about time to mess with him, maybe make him piss his pants a little. (Figuratively, of course, because right now, who knows where his bladder is.)

Ino reaches out a slender hand, places two fingers on Hidan's towel, and pulls it towards her, slowly, so that his head slides across the table to rest in front of her. She places her hand on the table, and her chin on her hand, and they are face to face, and she stares at him with her blue-green eyes, depthless and unnerving.

She smiles. He narrows his eyes. She just barely, barely activates her mind-body switch technique, so that her being floats at the edge of his awareness, not enough to take over and control him, but enough that he feels her there, and their spiritual selves touch.

She feels his devotion to his god, a general insatiable bloodlust, and a whole lotta crazy.

Her essence swirls around his and speaks to it a musical whisper.

 _Hello, Hidan_.

His eyes widen, he gasps out a shocked stream of expletives. And Ino can understand, because the first time you feel someone else in your head – that squishy space between your ears that is the only thing in the whole world that is truly yours, or so you think – it is a profoundly disturbing thing.

"Woah, shit," says Hidan in rising panic. "Bitch is in my head. She's. In. My. Head."

Ino feels his spirit recoil, try to push her away, scramble – but here in his head, they are mere ephemeralities, and he can do nothing.

 _Don't worry, Hidan._

"How the fuck…?! What _are_ you?"

 _I'm here to help you._

"Only Jashin talks to me like this–"

Her essence curves itself around his, comforting and stilling his flights of panic.

 _Shh. I'm here for you. We'll find the rest of you together._

She feels him process this, and then she feels the bits of his madness and belief click their way into a conclusion –

"He sent you to me."

Ino feels the hot surge of faith that accompanies these words. And she sees that he is really kind of crazy, because he is taking her little bit of fun mind-fuckery as a divine experience.

He truly _believes_. How interesting. How strange. Ino prods him along, just to see.

 _That's right._

"I knew it. Bitch was denying it. Challenging my faith. But I knew…"

 _You knew._

"I've heard about creatures like her."

… _Yes, you have._

"She's an angel."

 _Wh–? Oh, yes. Absolutely. That. An angel._

Ino pulls out, then, before she damages him permanently by collapsing into a shrieking laughing fit in his head.

Hidan blinks hard after she vacates his headspace. Then he stares at her as she laughs.

"Oh my god, I was just messing with you," says Ino when her laughter has subsisted to just giggles. She wipes away a tear. "An _angel_. Could you be any cheesier? I mean really…"

Hidan is still staring at her with his mouth slightly open, as though the radiance of a celestial halo now illuminates her.

Ino snaps her fingers in his face. "Wake up. It was a joke."

He doesn't seem to see her hand, or really hear her at all.

"Holy fuck," he breathes. "I've been blessed by Jashin sending one of his own. To help me. To guide me."

Ino slaps him lightly on the cheek. "Snap out of it, dude. As if your killing god even has angels."

This gives him pause. "I wouldn't know. I never read the scriptures. They looked boring."

"Believe me," says Ino, "I'm not an angel. I'm just a kunoichi with a mind-fuck jutsu. Okay?"

His eyes glow at her with the strength of his belief. "I have all the proof I need."

And Ino wonders if she might not have made a small mistake.

VVV


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 _Heartless she is,  
As the shadow in the meadows  
_\- George Meredith

Ino does not tell her cousin Kiku about Hidan, because the woman would probably faint, or call an exorcist, or otherwise cause some kind of botheration. She decides that she will bring him back to Konoha with her, when she returns there at the end of the summer, to see what the wise minds of the Council can make of him.

A few days after she finds Hidan's head, when her shift at the shop is over, Ino returns to the marsh where the waterlilies grow. She picks (kills) a few dozen of them, to have something to show Kiku when she returns, and then she wanders in her yellow waders, sloshing up silt and debris from the bottom of the swampy waters.

Ino has theorized that, if Hidan's body parts were all thrown down the same faraway waterfall in Cloud, perhaps they were all trapped in the same current, and maybe there are other bits of Hidan floating around here somewhere, near where she found his head.

And if this Jashin of his truly exists, then he would have made sure of that.

And just when she has that thought, Ino spies a thumb sticking out of the water next to her boot.

It is a creepy, morbid coincidence. Ino squats down, wrinkles her nose, sets her jaw grimly, and pulls at the thumb. The swamp releases its grasp with a wet sucking sound, and up comes a perfect human male arm, well-muscled, severed neatly at the shoulder.

The arm harbours no sign of decay whatsoever. And Ino is disturbed, because the water is cool, but the arm is warm.

She tucks it into her basket, under her dying waterlilies, and carries it home.

As she walks through the hamlet's main gates, Sonkei, her farmer-lover with the muscles, hails her. He offers to help her with her basket, which, normally, Ino would gladly pass on to him, because it's smelly and dripping wet – but if he were to look into the basket properly, he might raise awkward questions, such as why she is carrying a severed human arm.

So Ino says no, she's a big strong girl and she can carry it herself. She counters by asking him if he'd like to take her to dinner later – which he, of course, gladly agrees to. They settle on a time and place, and he gives her a kiss with chapped farmer's lips, a kiss that smells like sun and green, and they part.

Hidan begins to whine immediately when Ino returns to her apartment, as he has every day since she brought him home. Because she was gone for _so long_ , and he was _so bored_ , and he thinks he's hungry but he can't actually tell, since his head isn't attached, and –

"Is this yours?" asks Ino, holding up the arm. The waterlilies that had curled delicately around it slip off gently and fall wetly to the floor.

"…Holy fucking shit!" says Hidan in sudden, if rude, delight. "You found my arm!"

"I did," says Ino.

"High-five!" says Hidan.

Ino gives him a dark look.

" _Do it_ ," says Hidan. "Come on, be cool."

Ino grimly gives the severed arm a high-five.

Hidan kicks up an enormous fuss when Ino carries the arm to the bathroom to wash it and leaves him on his towel in front of the television. So Ino places his head on the closed toilet lid and lets him watch as she gives the stinky arm a bath, which, by the way, feels incredibly weird.

Hidan watches her reverently. "I can't believe you found it. What are the odds…? I'm in his favour. He won't regret it. Tell him that, will you?"

"Tell who?" asks Ino, concentrating on untangling some weeds from between fingers.

"Jashin. Who the fuck else?"

Ino pauses in her ministrations long enough to roll her eyes. "Sure. I'll tell him. Any other messages to relay while I'm at it?"

He thinks for a moment. "Well, yes, could you –"

"Shit, it's almost six?!" interrupts Ino, glancing at her watch. "I need to shower."

"What about my messages?" whines Hidan. "Besides, I think my arm needs a shower more than you do. Considering that it's been in that damn swamp for weeks…"

"It's clean enough," says Ino, rinsing the arm and hefting it out of the tub. "And I have a dinner date."

She wedges Hidan's head into her hip on one side, and his arm on the other side, and carries them out to the couch in front of the television. Hidan mutters something vulgar into her waist; she resists the temptation to squeeze him down against her hip bone and break his nose.

"There," she says, when Hidan and his arm are nestled together in front of the television. "Reunited at last. Now you can pick your nose or whatever. Try to behave; I'm going to go get ready."

Ino's dinner date is only at eight, but Ino takes a long time to get ready. She's naturally beautiful – obviously – but it takes a little preparation to be truly _stunning_. And she spent the afternoon mucking about in a marsh in yellow waders, so tonight, she feels like being _stunning_ , turning some heads, taking some breaths away, and making the farmer feel like the luckiest man in this village. Which he is, tonight at least.

She rinses out the tub with bleach to erase any remaining leech poo before she steps into it herself, and then she showers until the hot water runs out. She pulls on some moderately sexy lingerie and painstakingly dries and styles her extravagantly long hair so that it falls in soft waves all the way to her waist. Then comes the make-up, a simple look tonight, eyeliner, mascara, a few kisses worth of lip gloss.

Then, a dilemma. Black dress, or red dress? Ino holds them both up and studies herself the mirror. It's a dilemma, because either way, she is breathtakingly gorgeous, so how's a girl supposed to choose?

"Which one?" says Ino to Hidan, standing in front of the head with a dress in each hand.

And her in the middle, wearing only her bra and panties, as Hidan remarks loudly.

"What? I thought you didn't care about temptations of the flesh, or whatever," says Ino, looking down at her flat stomach, her perfect breasts encased in their cups, her glorious legs.

"I don't. But you're being slutty as fuck right now. It's _unseemly_ for an envoy of Jashin. Seriously."

Ino considers him with slightly pursed lips for a moment. Then she drapes the dresses over the back of the couch and leans down towards him, making sure to give him an eyeful of cleavage as she does.

"Darling," speaks Ino into his ear in a voice that would make his toes curl, if he had any, "when I'm being _slutty as fuck_ , you'll know it."

She straightens up, ruffles his hair, and gives him a smile. "For now, I'm just being slutty. And not for you, either, so don't worry your pretty little head. Which is it, red or black?"

Hidan seems at a loss for words at her behaviour, and his eyes don't know where to look, but he eventually finds his tongue. "Red and black are both Jashin's colours. Red is blood. Black is death. As you should fucking well know, being his angel and all…"

"Useless," says Ino with a sigh, and she sways her way back to the bedroom and leaves him to his mutterings about whores.

She settles on the red dress and slips on matching heels.

Some time later, Ino emerges from the bedroom in all of her done-up glory. The wordless, slack-jawed double-take that Hidan gives her is eminently satisfying, because, you know, she is beautiful, but it's not every day you get to stun a devout decapitated head into silence.

Ino twirls for him.

"Damn," says Hidan. "You clean up pretty good."

"I'd do me," says Ino, looking at her reflection in the darkened window. "Would you do me?"

"I don't _do_ people, that's filthy fucking sinning," says Hidan. "And you belong to Jashin."

Ino fixes a strand of hair that is already perfectly in place and smirks at him in her reflection. "If you say so."

"He _does_ know how to pick 'em, though," says Hidan, after having studied her figure from behind for a moment.

"Aww. You're sweet, for a dickhead."

Then Hidan blinks and looks up curiously, because Ino is standing in front of him with a balled-up cloth in her fist.

"What…?"

"You'll have to forgive me for this," says Ino, gagging him swiftly. "We'll be coming back here after dinner, and I don't need you making remarks."

Hidan's indignation is effectively muffled, but his eyes – they blaze his offense at her like violet fire. Ino smiles at his powerless fury, tucks his arm into an empty drawer, and places his head in a vase of tinted glass on a high shelf, in the shadows where no-one will see him – especially not the man that she is bringing here tonight, who will have eyes only for her.

Hidan will have a good view of the bed through her bedroom door from that perch. Ino taps her lip as she considers this, and then decides that she really doesn't care.

She leaves Hidan to stare at her empty bed and fantasize about death, or whatever it is he does in his spare time, while she goes out to dinner.

VVV

Dinner is lovely. It is Ino's fifth or sixth time out with farmer-boy Sonkei, and again, Ino is quite taken by the muscular forearms that make his shirtsleeves tight, his tan, his shy eyes. He is so handsome, and innocent, and rustic, and so… non-shinobi. He worries about crops and rain and cows, not missions and political intrigues and his inevitable death. It's a nice change from the men that make up Konoha's dating pool. (And let's be honest, she has dated most of the eligible ones there, and left a trail of broken hearts in her wake.)

They walk back to her apartment together after dinner, and he barely lets her get through the door before he lifts her up and presses her against the wall and pushes her dress up her thighs. They exchange heated kisses. He asks if all of the girls in Konoha are like her, because she is incredible, and she laughs, and says, sadly no.

They move to the bed, and, as this is the third time that they're having sex, Ino takes it slow, and enjoys his rough hands and his enthusiasm and his hard body built by years of honest sweat, and she rewards him for all of these things, and they finish and linger together a while.

Ino gets out of bed eventually to clean up and pull on a sexy little negligee, and then she dives back into his arms. He kisses her and asks if she _has_ to leave at the end of the summer, because – he laughs, and pretends to be joking – he thinks he might be falling in love with her. He hopes she'll reconsider. He has things he wants to share with someone, now that he's worked hard and built up his large farm house, ploughed his three hundred acres, he even has a pond where waterlilies grow, she likes those, doesn't she?…

Ino laughs and shakes her head; she is only here for the summer. She successfully hides the desire to sigh a heavy, dread-filled sigh, because she knows that, though he jokes about it, and in spite of her warnings, he really is falling in love with her. And Ino doesn't really do the whole love thing. So this is going to end badly for one of them.

But not now, not yet – now they are at the beginning, and the summer stretches in front of them with its endless golden days, and farmer-boy is Ino's entertainment, comfort, and fun. Besides, she's told him enough times, this is just a summer thing. Whatever he does after that is not her fault.

He doesn't stay the night. Ino walks him to the door, leaning on his broad shoulder. She promises to come by for dinner at his house next week. He'll kill a chicken, they can have a roast with some of his home-grown potatoes.

He leaves. Ino closes the door and sighs and finishes her glass of wine. She wishes that she wanted that kind of life, because it sounds perfectly lovely.

Instead, she keeps severed heads as pets, you know, for shits and giggles.

Ino turns her attention to the head in question, which is currently glaring mutely at her from the shelf.

She saunters over, removes Hidan from the vase, pulls out the gag, and is treated to a vehement stream of outraged profanity about her behaviour, the farmer ("Jizzface"), her whoreish ways, the fact that he had to witness every dirty little detail…

"I'm a man of the cloth! How _could_ you fucking make me _watch_ …"

"Could've closed your eyes," says Ino, delicately placing her empty wine glass on the side table, next to the ranting head.

He is taken off balance by this simple, and very true, observation.

Ino notices, of course, and allows herself a slow smile. "Hope you enjoyed the show."

"…That's not the point, bitch-tits, and you know it."

Ino runs her fingers through her hair. "Whatever you say. Are you done crying yet?"

" _No_ , actually…"

"He's going to kill a chicken next time I see him," says Ino as she makes a loose braid. " _Kill something_ , Hidan. Your god would be proud."

"Are you kidding me? A _chicken_? You are the fucking _worst_. You could have killed _him_! It was the perfect set up for a sacrifice!"

"I did kill him," says Ino.

"Do you think I'm blind?" asks Hidan.

"Yes, and stupid, too," says Ino.

"Ex-fucking-cuse me?"

"Orgasms," says Ino.

"…What about them?" asks Hidan, clearly not following, and pissy about it.

"They're called the little death," says Ino. "You've never heard of that? We both died a couple of times tonight. Praise Jashin."

Hidan looks at her with an almost violent skepticism. Ino winks at him. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again.

"Seriously? That's _not_ the same thing," says Hidan.

"Tch," says Ino dismissively, returning her attention to her hair. "Like you'd know."

"I do," he glares.

Ino gives him a quizzical look from between strands of white-gold. "You've had sex? I thought you were a virgin monk-boy, or whatever."

"Not sex," he says hastily. "Jashin only takes the pure under his divine wings. But. Orgasms. I've had… one or two. Before Jashin, obviously."

Ino gives him an unconvinced look. "Really. One or two, and _only_ before Jashin?"

Lying is not his strong suit, as Ino discovers when she fixes him with a penetrating stare.

"Okay, okay," he says, avoiding her eyes. "So sometimes wet dreams still happen… sometimes maybe I'm more awake than I should be when they happen…"

"You've indulged in the sins of the flesh," gasps Ino. " _Blasphemy_. I'm telling Jashin."

"Hey, I figure it can't be _that_ wrong. Because it's millions of potential babies I've just squirted into a tissue. You know?"

"Hm, when you put it that way…" says Ino, "I can see it. It's like you've slaughtered all of those potential lives."

"Extinguished," says Hidan.

" _Massacred_ ," says Ino.

"Slaughter turns me on, angel-slut," says Hidan, wiggling his eyebrows. "Keep talking dirty to me."

"How does a head get turned on?" asks Ino.

"My body is somewhere. It probably has a hard-on."

Ino pictures a rogue penis poking out of water amidst waterlilies somewhere and she laughs.

VVV


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 _And yet a spirit still, and bright  
With something of angelic light.  
_\- Wordsworth

The next week, Ino goes to the farmer's house for dinner. They eat the killed chicken (praise be) and the potatoes, all organic and homegrown and delicious. Then he walks her around his property in the long summer evening, and shows her his orchards and his green fields and his rolling hills of wheat dancing endlessly into the horizon, and she knows he's telling her that, if she sticks around and lets him court her, it could all be hers too.

At sundown, they walk around the pond and Sonkei shows Ino the corner with the waterlilies, their petals all curled up now that night-time is imminent. It is a beautiful, tranquil scene – mauves and whites intermingle with the evening's long shadows and night creatures begin their clicking, croaking chorus.

Ino tells farmer-boy to wait as she weaves her way gracefully through some cattails, intent on picking a waterlily for him. Killing a waterlily, that is – praise Jashin, ha, ha.

The instant the god's name flits though her mind, something like a pressure, or like a will beyond her own, causes her to look down. She catches sight of a pale shape in the dark water at her feet. Something that was definitely not there a moment before, unless she really _is_ blind.

Something that looks rather a lot like a human limb.

Ino keeps her face sweetly neutral and plucks the waterlily that she had been eyeing. She hands it, still dripping, to the farmer, with a kiss, and tells him to take good care of it. He says some things to her, words of attachment, and she nods and smiles, and they walk back to the village arm in arm along a romantic country lane, and Ino remembers absolutely nothing of the conversation.

Farmer-boy drops Ino off in front of the closed-up flower shop and leaves after kissing her goodnight warmly. Ino's head is a thousand miles away – well, no, more like five miles, back at the pond on his property where a dismembered leg awaits her – but she does her best to kiss him back and seem normal, like this is just the end of a lovely evening and not the beginning of a weird night.

Ino slips into the flower shop as she usually would to make her way up to her apartment, but instead of going up the stairs, she stands at the window and watches Sonkei disappear. She gives him a fifteen minute head start before she exits the shop and follows. But this time, she does not walk like a civilian girl through the quaint streets of Kurashiki; she flies like a kunoichi from shadow to shadow until the edge of the village, and then she cuts across fields instead of taking the romantic country lane to Sonkei's farm.

She creeps back onto his property and makes nice with the farm dogs who recognize her with vigorous tail wags, and she fishes the limb out of the pond and carries it home, wrapped in her jacket.

VVV

" _Finally_ , you're home," says Hidan's whiny voice as he hears the front door open. "You ditch me so often, I'm starting to think you don't like me."

"I don't," says Ino, snapping the door shut behind her. "So I don't really know why I keep bringing home _more_ of you."

Ino lays her jacket on the sofa and flips it open to reveal a human leg, sliced just above the knee, and laced with the long fronds of a single waterlily.

"Yours?" asks Ino, but she already knows it is, because she was led to it when she thought his god's name in a kind of joke invocation, and it's the second time that _that's_ happened, and this whole thing is kind of starting to creep her out.

"My leg!" squeals Hidan. "You know, I fuckin' prayed that Jashin would guide you, because I think he forgot about you for a while, so you fell into fornication and sin and shit…"

Ino places him on his usual observation post on the toilet lid as she gives the leg a thorough wash.

Hidan observes her every movement with a kind of rapture.

"Stop looking at me like that," says Ino brusquely, when his worshipful gaze becomes too much.

"How can I _not_ ," says Hidan, eyes aglow with fervor. "You're _amazing_ , angel-bitch. This is just more proof that you're the one, you've been sent to help me by Jashin himself. How the fuck else are my body parts materializing around you?"

"They were all caught in the same current and ended up in the waterways around here," says Ino. "Obviously. It's coincidence. And you're a fanatic, so you make everything fit your stupid beliefs."

"I understand," says Hidan with a beatific look. "You can't really acknowledge your true nature in this place… this world of sin. But I know. You know. _We_ know. You're an agent of Jashin, sent to piece together my worldly body, so that I can continue to do his work…"

He rambles on about destiny and Jashin's hands and divine interventions and Ino's holiness and how blessed he is, and and and…

And he doesn't even know the half of it, and Ino will never, ever tell him. Because, twice now, she has found bits of him after a half-assed mock-prayer, and, twice now, those prayers were answered, immediately and decisively.

These were coincidences, and she's being silly. Just flukes.

Ino doesn't think too hard about how a limb of the size of the leg she is currently scrubbing could possibly have ended up in that isolated pond on Sonkei's property with no connection to a river and no current whatsoever. Maybe an animal dragged it in. Or there was a huge rainstorm and a nearby stream flooded into the pond and carried the leg in too. Or perhaps the pond is fed by a secret underground river.

See? There are all sorts of rational explanations.

Ino dries off the leg and, since she also has his arm, she makes a Box of Hidan out of a storage bin and puts his body parts in there.

Then she makes for the kitchen and pours herself a glass of white wine. Hidan disapproves and lectures her, because drink is sinful. Ino informs him that she needs some liquid fortification, because it's been a strange night, so he can shove his opinion up his ass, except, oh wait, he doesn't have one.

To her mild surprise, he snickers and calls her a funny little wino-bitch instead of moralizing further. Ino ferries him to the sofa and perches him on the armrest, places the box on the floor, and curls up next to Hidan with her wineglass in one hand and a little pile of cheese squares in the other, which help make everything better.

Hidan looks upon the small collection of limbs in the Box of Hidan with great fondness, and snuggles his face into Ino's armpit, and tells her thank you, he is so fucking blessed to have her, seriously, and can she convey his soul-felt gratitude to Jashin…

"So how many parts were you cut into, exactly?" asks Ino as she contemplates the box's gruesome contents.

"Damn, good question," says Hidan. "Lemme try to remember how it went… he cut off my arms first, the fucker, so I was completely useless… then my leg, so I'd fall over, which I did, and then my head, because he wanted me to shut up. Hah – like that would've worked. Dumbass…"

"And then," says Hidan, looking at the ceiling very serenely, in Ino's opinion, for someone reminiscing about his hideous dismemberment, "I _think_ my body and right leg should still be in one piece, unless they got torn up going over the falls… that motherfucker had a mean throw."

"Two arms, a head, a leg, and possibly a torso and leg in one piece," counts Ino on her fingers. She looks up at Hidan, quite unimpressed. "That seems like a long list of parts."

"Come on, sugar-tits, we're already at three out of five, here," says Hidan. "Cheer up."

"I guess," says Ino, reaching down to poke one of Hidan's toes in morbid fascination. "What did you do to piss the guy off so much?"

"I was doing him the huge _honour_ of trying to sacrifice him to Jashin, actually," says Hidan. "He took it the wrong way for some reason."

"You tried to kill him and he got mad?" says Ino. "Weird."

"I know, right?" says Hidan. " _Thank you_. No-one gets me like you do."

Ino keeps her face neutral in the face of his obliviousness.

"I kind of missed the part where he was a swordplay genius, when I met him," continues Hidan. "Some katana freak. I should never have tried. I couldn't even get blood off him, he was so fast. Hindsight's always fuckin' twenty-twenty."

He turns to Ino with a small glow of devotion in his eyes. "But hey, angel-bitch, if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met you, and you're, like, Jashin's godly hand on earth, so it was all worth it in the end. Seriously."

Ino doesn't meet his eyes. She would really like to think that she is _not_ Jashin's godly hand on earth, because he is the fantastic creation of a mad monk's mind, but sheer dumb luck has led her to that monk's lost body parts twice. Three times, if you count his head.

She can understand why, to Hidan, it could seem convincing. Less impressive feats have been labelled miracles by people of far less faith.

Ino looks out of the big bay windows, but it is pitch black outside, and all she can see is her pensive reflection on the couch, and, a little to her left, Hidan perched on the armrest, contemplating her with quiet devotion, like she's some kind of a saint.

Seeking distraction from his uncomfortably reverent gaze, Ino undoes her high ponytail and loosens her hair between her fingers with a sigh.

Hidan watches her. She sees his nose twitch as the smell of her shampoo wafts towards him. She doesn't bother to tell him that the main floral notes reaching his nose are (god damn it) waterlilies. It's a random coincidence; she bought this shampoo before coming here for the summer. And it's information that she would rather keep to herself, because he will make something of the fact, it will just be added to his ever-growing list of so-called evidence, and… just, no.

He sniffs loudly. "Smells good. What's in your shampoo, flower-girl?"

"Jasmine," lies Ino, because it's not like he'll be able to tell – he's a guy, for god's sake.

"Huh," says Hidan. "I guess jasmine smells different where I come from."

Oops. Ino leaps at the opportunity to change the subject. "Where do you come from, anyway?"

"Yugakure."

"Never heard of it," says Ino.

"It _was_ a ninja village, once," says Hidan. "Then some pansy-ass peace-loving hippies took over. And they made it a civilian town. A resort town. 'Cuz it has hot springs everywhere."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," says Hidan. His features harden; it seems that this is still a sore spot for him. "And I wanted to be a shinobi, not a pool boy. So I killed a bunch of people and I left."

Ino tilts her head at him. "A shinobi? You?"

"Yeah."

" _Really_. Do you pretty people to death, too?" asks Ino with a smirk.

Hidan looks unimpressed by Ino's assessment of his looks. "Fuck off. I'm ruggedly handsome."

"Eh," says Ino, her eyes traveling slowly from his refined features to his startling eyes to his too-soft, too-pretty hair. "Debateable. Besides, I thought you were a priest."

"These things aren't mutually exclusive," says Hidan. "Slaughter is my faith. And assassinations and shit are my job. It works."

"Too bad," says Ino. "You would've made a great pool boy."

Hidan narrows his eyes at her. "I'm a priest of Jashin, bitch-tits."

"Yes, I know, but I can _see_ you as a pool boy," says Ino, contemplating him over the rim of her wineglass and hiding his missing body from her view with her hand. "Yeah. Prancing around in a tight swimsuit for the enjoyment of the ladies…"

He glares. Ino can see that her teasing is just on the verge of vexing him for real, so she drops it. "So you're a shinobi without a shinobi village. Are you a mercenary nin, now, or…?"

"Something like that," says Hidan. "I just joined this group that specializes in kidnapping demon vessels. Then I got side-tracked by katana-boy. I should probably send them an explanation, or something…"

"Probably," says Ino. "Or they won't retain you for long."

"Meh," says Hidan, and Ino imagines that he would be shrugging, if he had any shoulders. "Not my top priority. Jashin will guide me to where I'm supposed to be."

Ino turns away and stares somberly at her reflection.

"Like here," says Hidan. "With you."

Ino busies herself with running her fingers through her hair and is silent.

Hidan sighs. "You'll find the rest of me soon. And I can go on fucking up everyone's shit and making Jashin happy."

Ino idly makes a braid and does not answer.

"Did you fuck him tonight?" asks Hidan suddenly. "Farmer Jizz?"

Ino twitches an eyebrow, because the question has zero relevance to their conversation. But, nevertheless. "Yeah."

He looks like he's about to give her a scolding, so she presses her fingertips to his mouth. "Shh. Twice, actually. And then we walked around his property, and that's when I found your leg, so maybe there _is_ something in those little deaths that Jashin approves of…"

She leaves him to chew on that as she makes her way to the bedroom.

"I should have read the god damn scriptures," broods Hidan.

VVV


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4  
**

 **Author's note:** In case it's not obvious, I have a _huge_ girl-crush on Ino.

You know, you _know_ , she grew up into one of those boom anime babes that make you think the wrong thing.

VVV

 _What am I pondering, you ask?  
So help me God, immortality.  
_\- Milton

Business is blooming – booming – at Kiku's small flower shop. Ino teaches her cousin which local contacts are best for which varieties, which flowers are worth harvesting herself, how to manage her stock levels, and all the boring administrative housekeeping entailed in keeping a shop. These things aside, Kiku is wildly talented in the art of ikebana, far more so than Ino, and her flower arrangements fly off the shelves almost as quickly as she can produce them.

So half of the summer is over already, and it is late July. Ino is happy, and busy, and loved. She spends the night often at farmer-boy's house, and he often spends the night at her apartment (and Hidan and his disapproval are carefully gagged and placed in the vase on the shelf).

Tonight was another lovely evening with Sonkei, an evening of pretending that this could be for real, and she could live out a peaceful life in this tiny hamlet, and grow old with this kind-hearted man and his shy eyes and his warm heart.

Alas, Ino does not fall in love easily – in fact, to the best of her knowledge, she has never been in love at all – and the intensity of Sonkei's feelings has, over the summer, vastly outstripped her own, in spite of her well-meaning warnings to him on that front. And beyond that, Ino is a kunoichi, and heir to her clan's fortunes – and its politics, and its troubles. She could never leave those things behind.

But, for now, it is fun to pretend, and live this fantasy life out for as long as she can as the long weeks of summer stretch out lazily before her. Farmer-boy walks her across the quaint bridge that leads to the village square. They pause in the middle of it and look at the full moon's reflection on the still water below. They kiss and whisper some sweet nothings to each other, and he, regretfully, has to go, because he has to be up early tomorrow to go to some auction or other, in a village across the valley.

He squeezes Ino's hand, kisses it, and disappears into the night. Ino leans against the parapet and stares pensively at the moon's reflection, thinking about this happily-ever-after that Sonkei offers her, not because she would ever seriously consider it, but because the idea of it is an enchanting thing.

And then she feels stirrings of guilt, because right now, she is enchanted by an _idea_ in a dreamy sort of way, but farmer-boy is enchanted by her, truly and deeply. And Ino knows that, like all of her previous relationships, if you can call them that, this thing that she and Sonkei have going on right now is going to end in heartbreak – for him, not for her. She keeps reminding him that this is just a summer thing, but how can he help himself…

Ino rubs at the spot where Sonkei kissed her hand and watches the moon's reflection on the water below ripple as the breeze sighs around her. They never learn, these men. They never listen to her warnings. They always think that they are different. And they always end up broken-hearted creatures, pinning for her, and unable to really move on, even if they go through the motions of finding someone else and getting on with their lives.

The moon's reflection dances on the water. And then Ino blinks and notices a dozen waterlilies clustered below the bridge, a medley of whites and mauves, petals pulled up delicately against the night.

And suddenly, Ino's heart is in her mouth. Because she knows this bridge well; she crosses it every day on various errands in the village square. The waters below have always been unremarkable in terms of flora, populated only by a few cattails and reeds – Ino would know, she always notices these things.

There have _never_ been waterlilies here.

Ino wipes suddenly clammy hands on her white summer dress. She swallows and considers just turning around and walking away. But she also wants to see – to confirm that this is all a big coincidence, and that it's just been an unusually good summer for waterlilies…

So she clambers down slippery stone steps to the water, hesitantly at first, then more quickly as she is drawn down by a kind of fascination, an impulse, a sense of something _impending_ , and she knows exactly what, except there's just no way, there's not enough current here to carry anything in this man-made decorative waterway…

And in the back of her head, she tells herself, do not think his name, do not think Jashin…

Then she sees it, and she wants to scream: most of the body of a man, covered in partially-decayed rags, floating three feet away from the water's edge. And there is _no way_ that it was there before, because she would have seen it, farmer-boy would have seen it, they were staring right at this spot from above and the water was mirror-still under bright moonlight and… just… _how_ …

Ino just barely, barely, keeps it together, and does not freak the fuck out, though she really wants to.

By the time she has calmed down and equipped herself with a stick to drag and poke the body towards her, she is not surprised to find out that it is headless, and missing precisely two arms and one leg, and it is warm under her hands, and untouched by the ravages of decay, though the clothes are all but rotted off.

Ino lifts the body out of the water and carries it across rooftops to her apartment in a tumult of confusion. She enters her apartment through the window; it would be very difficult to explain the dismembered body to Kiku if she happened to be in the shop somewhere.

"Oh, sweet fuck," says Hidan upon seeing Ino's burden. "Sweet, sweet fuck. You have my body. _I love you._ "

Ino says nothing, because she is shaken and worried and scared, and she really doesn't want to be the angel of a horrible god of death, but apparently, she is.

It seems unfair that she did not have a choice in the matter. She would have chosen a kinder god, with less obnoxious clerics.

VVV

It is a peculiar thing, to be washing the naked, decapitated body of a man, while his head watches you from the lid of the toilet and gives you instructions. But such is Ino's life, now.

"Yeah, scrub my balls," says Hidan as Ino washes his body.

"Hidan?" says Ino, her nerves frayed and her patience at its end.

"Yes, slut-cake?"

"Shut _up_."

"But I like talking to you…"

Ino wedges a bar of soap vindictively between his teeth. It takes him a good thirty seconds to chew his way out of it, and they are thirty seconds of blessed silence.

"I should be pissed at you for that," says Hidan, frothing soap bubbles at the mouth just slightly. "But I can't, because you're Jashin's envoy, and everything you do is for his great purpose."

Ino ignores him. She doesn't like it, this dreadful, sinking sensation that he is right, and has been right all along, and so maybe he's not the crazy one, she is. Because in the face of mounting evidence, now, he was absolutely a hundred percent spot-on in his understanding of her role in this debacle, and she, the perpetual cynic, has been proven wrong again and again…

"Yeah, touch it," says Hidan in his vulgar way as Ino's hand hovers a polite distance from his penis, because his body has nasty pond-scum crusted into its thighs.

"Touch what?" asks Ino innocently.

"My dick," says Hidan.

"You mean this little acorn thing here?" says Ino, poking the appendage in question.

The sputter of soap bubbles and outrage that follows almost makes the whole night worth it to Ino. It is a blessed relief to lean against the tub and laugh until she is breathless at Hidan's semi-coherent exclamations of indignation.

It's not _really_ an acorn; he is fairly well equipped, and, of course, she had noticed it – but, also of course, she won't give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

Still laughing, she pulls the body from the bath, lays it on her bed and towels it off. The body is warm, and the severed stumps are perfectly clean, as impeccable as the moment they were sliced into existence by faraway katana-boy. It's like magic, or… something.

Ino decides to stick with magic.

Hidan's head glowers at her from the nightstand, still pissed at her about the acorn thing. Ino notices.

"You should have _seen_ your face," she says, giggling as she dries the body.

"Funny joke. Real fucking mature," Hidan says darkly when Ino's giggles subside.

"Oh, please," says Ino, sobering up. "As _if_ the idiot who asked me to scrub his balls gets to lecture me about maturity,"

"I'm immortal," says Hidan huffily. "It doesn't get much more mature than that. I'm gonna live for _centuries_."

"Centuries. That's cute," says Ino in the most casual patronizing tone possible.

It is not, obviously, the response that Hidan was expecting. He narrows his eyes at her. "Don't get condescending with me, bitch-tits."

Ino looks up at him and she decides that, if she really is an agent of his god, which she is beginning to suspect she might actually be – well, she's going to instill a bit of a fear of god in this insufferable priest. Right now.

She puts down the towel, seats herself cross-legged on the bed, and puts Hidan's head in her lap.

"No panty-shots, please," says Hidan, nevertheless taking a good look up her dress. "I'm a man of the cloth."

"I think you've forgotten who you're talking to," says Ino gently.

He looks up at her suspiciously and with a very slight apprehension. Her hair cascades down around the two of them, a curtain of white gold, wafting waterlilies.

He swallows drily. She just barely activates her mind-body switch and her eyes bore into his – celestial turquoise into wary violet. And then she is in his head, floating amidst the disjointed pieces of his sanity and the hot glow of his faith.

She feels his essence shrink back as she invades his headspace and delivers a bitch-slap of cold, righteous divinity.

 _Have you forgotten who I am?_

He flinches away and tries to flee. She gives chase, delighted in the sport, because it has been a long time since she has played these kinds of games, and she is very, very good at them.

 _Hidaaan_ , she calls musically as he tries to hide in a dark corner of his mind. Her voice fills his head with an ethereal, disorienting chorus. He reels and she finds him, swirls and dances into him, takes up his headspace and makes him feel how much she owns him right now.

His spirit recoils at the feel of hers, but there is nowhere to go. She corners him and presses herself into him until his escape attempts become weak flutterings and, after a time, stop.

 _I'm an angel._

"Yes."

He has stilled. He is no longer fighting her, no longer resisting.

 _I'm eternal._

 _Like Jashin._

"Jashin," he repeats. "Forgive me."

She feels his essence slacken completely. They float together now, intermingling spirits. Ino has never felt this complete lack of resistance, this complete spiritual surrender, even when practicing this technique on her closest friends. He has given himself to her utterly; she could make him do anything.

To her, the moment is notable only in that this is an unusual reaction to her technique.

To him, it is a moment of oneness with the divine. He sighs deeply.

 _Your little centuries are a blink in time to me._

 _You understand?_

"Yes."

His devotion reverberates around her, and, if she's honest, it is almost overwhelming.

The levels of cray-cray _are_ overwhelming.

Ino pulls out.

Hidan shudders as she exits his head and his eyes glow at her like he wants to sacrifice the world in her name, in the glory of their god.

"Put me back together," he says, breathless and radiant with belief. "Please. You beautiful whore of an angel."

VVV


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5  
**

 _'Tis no sin to cheat the devil.  
_ \- Defoe

Ino fetches the Box of Hidan and assembles the pieces. Just to mess with him, she places his leg where his arm should be, and his arm where his leg should be, and acts confused when he gets mad.

"What? Jashin told me to," says Ino.

"Hilarious," says Hidan with a black look. "Classic Jashin."

Ino smirks and repositions his limbs into their rightful places. She finishes by plucking his head from the nightstand and placing it on his severed neck, and now she's looking at a fully-pieced together man, except for his missing left arm.

It's weird how much space he takes, all put together like this. Ino thinks that she might prefer the storage convenience of the other configuration, but he would no doubt disagree.

"Hey. Do you know how to sew?" asks Hidan casually as Ino adjusts his head.

"Sew?"

"Yeah. I need this shit kept together so I can heal."

"What? Ew. I'm not going to sew you like some kind of barbarian," says Ino, shaking her head. "I have training in medical ninjutsu."

This doesn't seem like an overly interesting detail to Ino. But to him… he looks at her with his mouth partially open for a moment.

"Of course you do," he says after a beat of silence. "You're actually _perfect_ for me."

Many men have told Ino that she's perfect. None have ever said it with this degree of conviction. It's flattering, really. It's too bad he's a fanatic, filthy-mouthed priest who is also batshit crazy.

"Let's start with getting that head back on, shall we?" says Ino as she pulls her chakra to her hand and places the healing glow against his neck.

"Yes, fuckin' _let's_ ," says Hidan eagerly. "Ooh. Your hand's cold. And _tingly_."

"Quiet," says Ino. "I'm concentrating."

Ino's intention is just to seal the gap between his head and his neck using some basic chakra stitches, and then see what she can do about the healing the rest. Because none of her training ever involved reattaching a fully decapitated head, because that would be an exercise in futility, because the person would be kind of – you know – _dead_.

But then, as her chakra flows into his neck, incredible things happen: his cervical vertebrae realign, nerve endings, long-severed, meet again, veins and arteries rejoin their lost other halves, and flesh meets flesh and melds itself back together impossibly quickly. Ino knows that this speed and precision is not medically possible. His body is doing this, his immortality is doing this, his god is doing this, and she's a channel for his power…

"Holy shit! I can feel my body!" gasps Hidan with glee. "It's been so long!"

He can feel his body. Heaven help her, this shouldn't be possible. Those nerves should be dead. She knows this. His body parts were loped off long ago, and they should all be dead, and _he_ should be dead, and decayed to pieces, all the science and medicine and logic in the world tell her this. But he doesn't know it, because of his madness and his faith…

Ino's increasingly panicky thoughts are interrupted by Hidan. "Quick. Reattach my arm next. I need to scratch my balls something _fierce_."

She glares at him, he grins at her and mouths a kiss. "Praise Jashin, kittentits."

Ino attaches his arm (and he scratches his balls weakly), and then his leg, and then he lies there, almost a complete man again, and wiggles his limbs feebly.

"Man, I'm weak," says Hidan with a huff. "I need rest. This is gonna take some time to recuperate from. It was an _ordeal_ , you know? Jashin likes to see his faithful suffer. Makes me remember what I owe him."

Ino is not one of the faithful, but she is suffering too. She doesn't want to be crazy, but she is starting to _believe_ , and anyone who believes in this random death-religion bullshit is crazy, so, ergo, she must slowly be going crazy too. It hurts her head to think about it, and it also offends her profound sense of rationality.

Overall, it stinks. It stinks like Jashin's asshole.

Hidan's self-absorption wanes just enough for him to notice Ino's silence. He glances at her where she sits next to him on the bed.

"Alright, wonder-girl. Now you just find me my arm and I'm back in business."

Ino blinks slowly. The remark raises a _possibility_. The possibility of testing the reach of his god in this world, if all of this hasn't just been pure happenstance. If she avoids the marsh, and the pond, and the bridge – in fact, if she avoids bodies of water entirely…

"Wonder-girl?" says Hidan, reaching out to tug weakly at her fingers.

Ino pulls away from his touch and shakes her head to clear it. "Sorry. Just thinking."

"Communing with Jashin. I get it," says Hidan, attempting a grave nod and managing a shaky kind of bob instead.

"Stop that," says Ino, "unless you want your head to fall off again."

"That's what Jashin gave me you for," says Hidan with a wink. "Can you tell him he has my eternal gratitude? Literally eternal. Make sure he knows that."

There is no point in arguing with crazy, so Ino doesn't argue with crazy. Instead, she looks at him, this naked man that she has literally pieced back together, who should have been long dead, but is alive – and she thinks of how she will defy his god.

No more water, no more waterlilies, no more body parts. She's done.

"I'll find you something to cover up with," says Ino, getting up to rummage through some drawers. "Now that you're all… back together."

"Aw… is my _acorn_ making you uncomfortable?" asks Hidan with some degree of snark.

Ino giggles unexpectedly and the laughter makes her feel better. And perhaps it is better to laugh at the whole situation – it is certainly absurd enough to warrant it – than to go bonkers thinking too hard about its implausibility.

She finds some random boxers left in her belongings by some man or other at some point and lobs them at Hidan's head.

He raises his hand to catch them with agonizing slowness, a good ten seconds after they've landed on his face crotch-first.

"Teehee," says Ino.

"Oh, my sweet little angel," says Hidan, pulling the boxers off of his face slowly. "You're lucky you're heaven-sent, or I'd have to kill you for that kind of disrespect."

Ino straightens her back immediately, and gives him a Look.

"Nah, I was kidding," he says quickly. " _Obviously_ … please don't come back in my head, it's scary as fuck when you do that…"

Ino stares at him with her fathomless eyes for a few extra seconds, just enough to make him uncomfortable, then she turns away and gets ready for bed. Hidan struggles pathetically with the boxers with many muffled swears.

Ino makes an impatient sound when she comes back from brushing her teeth and he still hasn't managed to get one foot into them.

"Just pitiful," she says as she pulls the boxers on for him. "Why does Jashin even keep you on the roster…"

"Hey, he's gotta cut me some slack," says Hidan. "I went through some heavy shit. I'm _convalescing_ , here."

He's right, of course. In fact, it's a miracle that he can talk at all, that he can move at all, that he is alive at all. But Ino won't tell him that. She mustn't be an enabler.

Ino turns off the lights and pushes Hidan over to one side of the bed. He struggles weakly and whines at her not to hurt the invalid.

"Shut up," says Ino. "I'm going to sleep. It's two in the morning. If you make a sound, you're sleeping on the couch."

"Alright, frig…"

Ino flips over, nestles into the sheets, and closes her eyes. The room is silent. It has been a long day, and sleep comes quickly to her, she is just on the brink of it…

"Ino?" says Hidan.

Ino clenches her teeth, tries to take a breath and regain her serenity, and fails hard.

" _What_ ," she spits.

"I'm hungry…"

Ino feels all of the sweet bliss of sleep dissipate as her irritation flares.

"So go make yourself a sandwich."

He is silent for a moment and Ino knows that her suggestion is unfair, because he is currently unable to really move, but he _could_ have brought this up like half an hour ago…

"But… I can't get up," he says. "And I only have one hand…"

Ino snarks out a rude something or other and throws off the covers.

"You better like peanut butter and jelly," she says, stomping to the kitchen.

"Actually," he calls after her, softly, as though afraid she will hear him, but also afraid she won't, "I'm allergic to nuts…"

Ino stops in her tracks and turns to him slowly. He actually flinches, a bit, which immediately puts her in a better mood.

"It's not _my_ fault, god damn… they give me hives."

Ino shakes her head and makes for the kitchen, where she slaps together a turkey sandwich, which is slammed onto Hidan's chest two minutes later.

"Here. And don't get crumbs in the bed," says Ino. "Or I'll kill you."

"Man, remind me never to wake you up again," says Hidan, leaning against the headboard and struggling one-handedly with his sandwich. "You're never this mad when _he_ wakes you up."

"Who?"

"Jizzface."

Ino rolls her eyes. "That's because _Sonkei_ is a total sweetheart who wakes me up with kisses and breakfast in bed. And he's adorable, and in love with me."

Hidan sniffs.

"And _you_ ," says Ino, sliding back under the blankets in a pissy kind of way, "are none of those things."

"I'm adorable," says Hidan defensively.

"Pfft."

"Well," says Hidan, "I definitely love you."

Ino, who had just been settling down next to him, freezes and stares wide-eyed at the ceiling. Men fall in love with her a lot, because she's gorgeous and smart and passionate – but _this_ guy?

Hidan chews on, oblivious. "I mean, you're Jashin's holy fuckin' herald on earth. Even being next to you is like being on consecrated ground. Therefore…"

He waves his hand in lieu of explanation, because a slice of turkey is dangling out of his mouth and onto his chin.

"Lovely," says Ino.

She catches the turkey before it smears mustard everywhere and stuffs it back into his mouth for him.

He looks expectantly at her, holding the rest of the sandwich, which is quickly falling apart in his limp one-handed grip.

Ino makes a sound of intense exasperation. " _Really_. I have to hand-feed you, on top of everything else?"

"Just _temporarily_ , angel-tits," says Hidan. "I _was_ supposed to be your pet, remember…"

As she tears up bite-sized pieces of the sandwich and feeds them to him, Ino wishes that she had actually bought gerbil pellets.

As for Hidan, he seems eminently satisfied with the arrangement. He looks at her warmly as he chews. "Being hand-fed a goddamn sanctified sandwich by Jashin's own. Fuck, I am so blessed right now."

He finishes the sandwich, then looks down to where a few crumbs have strayed onto his bare chest and stomach.

Ino notices the crumbs and her gaze darkens dangerously at him.

"Shit, I'll just, um," he says, hovering his uncooperative hand above the crumbs.

Ino snatches his hand out of the air and pushes it away. "Don't even try, you'll just make it worse."

She brushes the crumbs off him and over the side of the bed briskly, perhaps smacking him a little harder than needed in the process.

"Now. It's quarter to three," says Ino, settling back into the blankets. "My shift downstairs starts at 8:30 this morning. That's in five hours. I'm sleeping. _Goodnight_."

"Night, angel-cake."

This latest term of endearment annoys her, for some reason, above all the rest, because it is actually _nice_. But now is not the time to argue about it with him. Now she must sleep.

She tucks them both back into bed and curls onto her side with a deep sigh.

And she is so tired that sleep comes blessedly quickly, again – it takes five minutes at most and she is at the edge of that sweet dark oblivion…

"Ino?"

Ino's eyes fly open and the ferocity of her gaze almost blasts a hole in the drywall.

" _What._ "

"…I forgot to brush my teeth."

VVV


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6  
**

 **Author's note:** I haven't read many Hidan fics, but I'm certain that this whole angel dynamic is very well-trodden by now, since the idea occurred to someone as unimaginative as I am. So you have my sincere apologies if this is an overdone cliché at this point.

Now let's talk about Hidan. From my (admittedly _very_ limited) foray into Hidan fics, he appears to be treated with an interesting kind of schizophrenia by the fandom, vacillating from fic to fic between pervy sex-fiend to utterly asexual god-fearing priest. Given that the canon surrounding him is quite limited, I don't mind either interpretation. I have tried to place him somewhere in the middle, myself, because I derive satisfaction from writing characters torn between two competing impulses. (Just so that we're clear: I cackle as I watch them squirm.)

VVV

 _Rain, midnight rain,  
Nothing but the wild rain  
_\- Edward Thomas

The day after Ino decides to avoid the few bodies of water around Kurashiki, it starts to rain. It rains for a whole day, and then the day becomes a whole three days, and the three days become a week.

Customers at Kiku's shop remark to Ino, as they buy their flowers, that it is a _very_ unusually wet month of August. This is normally the dry season. Ino nods innocently. Because, obviously, she has absolutely nothing to do with it, she's a random flower-girl. It would be absurd to suggest that Ino has anything to do with the damn weather.

After two weeks of steady rain, there is minor flooding here and there in the village. The streets are bordered by deep puddles and the man-made stream under the quaint bridge swells up, so that now you could actually lean over and touch the surface of the water, and play with the waterlilies, if you were so inclined…

Ino is not so inclined. She becomes extraordinarily creative with her pathfinding, taking stupidly roundabout – but mostly dry – routes as she goes about her daily business and social life. She recommends to Kiku that they cut back on their stock of waterlilies in the shop: with these rains, they're everywhere now, a pest almost, like dandelions, and no-one wants that in their bouquets.

VVV

Slowly, and with much bitching, Hidan recovers. One day, Ino comes home to find the bathroom door closed and the shower running. Which means that he managed to get to his feet, for the first time since she put him together.

He exits the bathroom some ten minutes later with a towel wrapped around his waist, limping only slightly.

Ino greets him with a slow clap. "Look at you, walking around and showering by yourself, like a big boy."

"Oh yeah," says Hidan. "Check it."

He does some random things with his feet that might have been some kind of dance. Except his legs don't really cooperate, and he only has one arm, so the whole thing is ridiculous.

Ino laughs, Hidan laughs. He limps towards her and places his single hand on her shoulder.

"Seriously though, angel-face – fucking _thank you_. For what you did for me. My next sacrifice to Jashin will be in your name."

"You're welcome," says Ino. "…I think."

She looks up at him and it feels weird. It is _strange_ to have pieced the guy back together over the course of months, and have him standing here in front of her, finally, and actually, a man. The head, the face that she has come to know so well, with its incessant whining prattle, looks different from this angle, because he is actually, as he claimed long ago, almost six feet tall.

He's fixed his hair so that it lies slicked back in silvery strands. His body language is all new to her, of course, because she hasn't really seen him move in one piece before, and she can already tell, from the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his head, that he carries himself like an overconfident asshole. That comes as no real surprise.

What does come as a surprise is that she finds him kind of attractive. She doesn't normally go for the skinnier, wiry guys, but he's lean and muscular and balanced in a way that pleases Ino's sense of aesthetics…

"Yo, space cadet. Anyone home?"

Hidan waves his hand in her face. Ino blinks. Oh yeah, so she was _totally_ just staring at the place where his abs disappear into his towel. And he _so_ noticed.

"Hey," says Hidan, giving her a look of penetrating violet intensified by a slow smirk. "Acorn's down there. Eyes are up here."

"I know," sniffs Ino. "I've already seen everything there is to see, and it _really_ wasn't that interesting."

He looks unconvinced. Arrogantly so. So he knows he's pretty, the brat.

Ino twirls a strand of her hair and gives him a once-over. "No… you're definitely not my type."

He quirks an eyebrow, apparently deciding to humour her. "Yeah? What's your type, angel-girl?"

"Jashin," says Ino.

That shuts him up quickly.

VVV

Ino buys Hidan some clothes. He favours black, but most of all he favours waltzing around shirtless. When he does bother to put on a shirt, he chooses one that unbuttons and keeps it open all the way past his navel.

He struts by Ino one Sunday morning when she is wrist-deep in flour and batter. She shakes her head because, as usual, he is bare-chested and his drawstring pants are riding stupidly low on his hips.

"Whatcha makin'?" he asks, sauntering over in a bored kind of way.

"Cake," says Ino. "Pull up your pants, you skank."

Hidan looks at his pants and pulls them down another half-inch.

Ino rolls her eyes. "I'm _so_ not the slutty one of the two of us."

"Uh, yeah you are," says Hidan, peering over her shoulder and poking a finger into the batter like the rude berk he is. "You fuck Farmjizz like every other day."

" _I'm_ allowed," says Ino haughtily as she slaps his hand away. "In case you haven't noticed, Jashin hasn't smitten me yet."

"I did notice, actually" says Hidan, licking his finger and looking Ino up and down as he does so. "You been granted some kinda exception?"

"Mm," says Ino noncommittally. "He should smite _you_ for dressing like such a man-whore. I think I'll remind him."

"Nah," says Hidan. "He knows clothes just get in the way."

"In the way of what?"

"The ritual."

"What ritual?"

Hidan gives her a look, like she's messing with him and being stupid on purpose.

"Speaking of which," he says, "do you have, like, a pike or a spear or something?"

"No…" says Ino.

"Well I guess I can just use one of these," says Hidan, pulling out the biggest knife from Ino's knife block. "I'm way fuckin' overdue for a sacrifice."

"Pardon?" says Ino.

" _Sac-ri-fice_ ," repeats Hidan, loudly, in her ear.

She elbows him hard for being so unbelievably obnoxious. "I heard you the first time, you dweeb. Just… what kind of sacrifice are we talking about?"

"Whoever, I don't care," says Hidan, testing the point of the knife. "Anyone in this shitty little town you don't like?"

"No –" says Ino vehemently.

"Ow, motherfuck," says Hidan, somehow managing to cut his fingertip. He sucks at the blood and wiggles his eyebrows at Ino. "Hey. How about I kill Farmer Chucklefuck."

Ino gives him a black look.

"C'mon," cajoles Hidan, wedging himself between Ino and the counter so she can't ignore him. "It would be the biggest honour for him. We can do it together, just when you're about to fuck. It'll be sexy. When do you see him next?"

"Tonight. It's his birthday. Hence the cake," says Ino, pointing at the batter. "And you can't kill him. Or anyone else."

"I gotta commune with Jashin, angel-girl, it's been so long," says Hidan entreatingly. "I know it's hard for you to understand 'cuz you're like, one with Jashin, all the time, but I _need_ this."

"You aren't sacrificing anyone from this village," says Ino.

Hidan sighs. "You gotta make things complicated…"

Ino does not like the way he doesn't meet her eyes.

VVV

That night, after doing her hair and finishing her makeup, Ino does her nails, perched on the sofa in admittedly quite scandalous lingerie and accompanied by a glass of chardonnay.

Hidan ambles over, having just spent an hour in the bedroom, praying or whatever it is he does to entertain himself.

He plops down onto the couch next to Ino and gives her a once-over. "Wow, slut-cheeks. How about some clothes?"

Ino doesn't even bother to look up. "You're just as naked as I am. Dickhead."

"Yeah," says Hidan, glancing down at his shorts, then back at her. "But I don't have doll tits. That's, like, an unfair advantage."

Ino straightens out her back and looks down at the fantastic rack in question in its sexy black bra. "I'm sorry, am I causing you to have… impure thoughts?"

Hidan looks away, pissy-like, instead of giving her an answer. Ino allows herself a self-satisfied smile as she turns back to her nails.

"What're you smiling about?" asks Hidan with suspicion.

"Oh, nothing," says Ino, not looking up. "You just confirmed something for me."

"What?" asks Hidan with narrowed eyes.

Ino shrugs. "You're so… full of yourself, and your faith, and your supposed holiness. But you're also just a guy."

Hidan looks at her and his face grows serious, like she just reminded him that he has an incurable disease.

"Yeah," he says. "I know."

This is absolutely not the response that Ino was expecting. She was expecting stringent denials, outrage, devout defensiveness. Nonplussed, she turns back to her nails. Hidan stares at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought.

There is a wonderful period of about five minutes when the silence is only broken by the sound of Ino shifting in her seat so that she can work on the other hand. But, alas, all good things come to an end, this moment of peace included, and whatever preoccupied Hidan fizzles out eventually.

He sighs heavily and stretches out along the sofa, getting various limbs obnoxiously in Ino's way.

"I'm _bored_ ," he whines when Ino knocks his arm out of her face. "And you're fuckin' ditching me tonight. _Again_."

"Mm."

His head is now somewhere in the vicinity of her armpit. He pokes her and gives her an upside-down look. "Hey. Perky McGee. Pay attention to me."

"I'm busy," says Ino. "Don't touch me. You'll ruin my nails."

He is silent for a few minutes. His knee jiggles impatiently.

"Who actually cares about this shit?" he asks as Ino meticulously spreads the pearl-white polish on her nails.

"I do," says Ino.

"But _why_."

"Because," says Ino, holding out her finished hand so that her nails shine in the lamplight. "I like being perfect."

Hidan sits up a little. He looks disapproving and preachy. Ino sighs and waits for it.

"You know what, angel-slut?" says Hidan. "You're vain."

"I'm gorgeous," says Ino. She turns to him, so that he can see her and be reminded that, in fact, she really is. "I'm allowed to be vain."

Hidan considers this. "I still don't think Jashin would approve."

"Oh, he approves," says Ino with a wink. "He approves _so hard_ , you have no idea."

The vaguely sexual implication confuses him. He stares at her in silence, but apparently he does not dare request further information lest he offend his god. All the better for Ino, because she's pulling this out of her ass.

Her nails done, Ino rises elegantly from the sofa (well, as elegantly as one can, without touching anything with one's wet nails) and makes for the bedroom.

"Come here," says Ino, beckoning Hidan to follow her with a forefinger. "I need you."

He raises a silvery-white eyebrow. Ino gives him a flirty little smile, because wine always makes her flirty.

"Dress," says Ino, pointing to the black dress laid carefully out on the bed. "Hold it out for me. I don't want to smear my polish."

He is surprisingly obedient, if whiny.

"This is shit. I only have one hand," says Hidan, kneeling down and attempting to hold the dress open for her to step into.

"Aw, poor darling," says Ino, leaning down to give him an extremely patronising kiss on the top of the head. "I currently have _no_ hands. So get a move on."

He gives her a violet glare as she steps into the dress with a ballerina's grace (and legs).

"Up," she says, holding her arms aloft for him to pull the dress onto her. "It's strapless, so you really can't mess this up…"

Yeah, he can. He pulls it up back-to-front.

"Really, Hidan?" says Ino, looking down at herself and trying not to laugh. "You think the zipper goes in the front?"

"Hey, I don't know fuck all about dresses," says Hidan, pulling it down again and stepping back as Ino rotates to face him. "It seems like it would be _convenient_ …"

For some reason, he is flustered. Ino shushes him and carefully cups his cheek in her palm. Her cool touch stills him and he looks down at her warily. Possibly because, normally, when she touches his face, she's about to deliver a dose of mind-fuckery. But not this time.

"You're a blessed moron," says Ino, her breath laced with chardonnay and mingling with his. "It's hilarious. I just want you to know."

"Glad I keep you entertained, angel-bitch."

He pulls the dress back up, the right way up this time, and Ino wiggles her way into it properly (it's a tight little hip-hugger that takes a little bit of dancing) and then she turns her back to him.

He stands there like a useless thing, staring at her.

"Well?" prompts Ino.

"What?"

"The _zipper_ , Hidan."

"Oh," says Hidan. "Right."

Ino hides her eyeroll by blowing on her nails as he zips her up. Through the mirror on the vanity, she sees his gaze travel slowly from her ass to the nape of her neck – understandable, because that is the path that the zipper takes – and then slowly back down to her ass, which is less understandable, except that she has a fine ass and maybe he appreciates that more than he lets on.

He catches her eye in the mirror.

She smirks.

He smirks back.

Oh, _really_.

"You checking me out, priest-boy?" asks Ino with a sultry look over her shoulder, because she's exceptionally good at those.

"I'm just appreciating Jashin's… blessings," says Hidan. "Zipper's up. You need help getting it down again, you let me know."

"Smooth," laughs Ino. "Good thing you're celibate."

"Am I?" asks Hidan.

Ino stops laughing. They stare at each other in the mirror. She feels the warmth of him against her back.

"Aren't you?" asks Ino.

"I dunno anymore," says Hidan. "These little deaths of yours are kind of _intriguing_ me… and Jashin hasn't smitten you yet."

Ino decides to assume that he is joking, laughs it off, and makes for the closet to slip on her heels. Then she steps delicately to the mirror and shakes out her hair so that it falls over her shoulder to her waist in a cascade of white gold. She fixes a few strands so that her face is perfectly framed, her cheekbones are accentuated, and one side of her neck is invitingly bare and very kissable. Farmer-boy is a lucky man tonight.

She turns to Hidan with an elegant spin. "So?"

He stares at her. She smooths down the dress to make sure that it lies just perfectly along the flat of her tummy and the flare of her hips, tilts her head at him and gives him a smile.

Hidan looks like his mouth has run dry. "…You're Jashin's."

"And…?"

"And you're fucking beautiful."

Of course, Ino has been told she's beautiful a thousand times before. So many times that the word has, for her, almost lost meaning, though the earnest mouths that spoke it meant every syllable. But this time – _this_ time… well, no man has ever told her while looking at her like she literally just descended from some celestial plane. It's stupidly gratifying.

"Well, duh," says Ino.

She click-clacks her way to the kitchen in her heels with that delightful added sway brought about by her stilettos, and she knows that he is watching.

"By the way," she calls as she retrieves the cake from the fridge. "I'm coming back here with Sonkei after we have dinner, so I need you to disappear for most of the night."

"Aw, but it's _raining_ ," whines Hidan as he follows her into the kitchen. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"Wherever," says Ino dismissively as she packs the cake. "I don't care."

"I'll just stay here, like I usually do," says Hidan. He tries to be casual about it, which immediately makes Ino suspicious.

"I don't think you'll fit into your little voyeur vase anymore," says Ino, twitching an eyebrow at him.

"It'll be dark in the living room. Just don't turn on the lights. He won't see me."

Ino licks some rogue frosting off of a fingertip and considers this.

"You'd willingly subject yourself to watching my atrocious sins? You? I'm shocked."

"I'll just be able to report on you to Jashin, later," says Hidan. He grins. His eyes hold something else.

Ino is puzzled, but she's also got somewhere to be in five minutes and she doesn't have time to figure out crazy-priest's weird plotting.

"Suit yourself," shrugs Ino. "Hide wherever. But if you say anything, or do anything, to make Sonkei notice you're here, I'm personally dismembering you again."

"Yeah, yeah," says Hidan, turning away indifferently, like he's heard it all before.

Ino halts his turn with light fingers on his shoulder. He stops and gives her a look that takes in how much closer her face is to his when she is in her heels, or maybe that is just her imagination.

"Just to clarify," says Ino with a sweet smile, "I'm not dumb enough to throw chunks of you down a waterfall. I'm blending up each piece of you and feeding the slop to farmer-boy's hogs. See if Jashin can put you back together from particles in pig shit. Still _yeah, yeah_?"

"Wow," says Hidan, looking genuinely impressed. "That's… actually kind of a great idea."

"I know, right?" says Ino brightly. "So don't fuck up."

He takes her hand and holds it to his heart. "I'm so hurt that my angel would have such violent thoughts about me, seriously."

"What can I say," says Ino, pulling her hand from his grasp and heading for the door. "Jashin is an unloving god."

VVV

Hidan doesn't make a peep when Ino and Sonkei return to the apartment. Ino carefully does not turn on any lights except for one small lamp in the bedroom, and they make love, slowly, on her bed. Afterwards, when she has pulled on a silky white negligee and looks even more angelic than usual, farmer-boy holds her close and asks her to move in with him, just for the rest of this oddly rainy summer, she might as well, rather than live in this tiny place…

Ino shakes her head and tells him it's a bad idea, she's leaving in a month, he is getting too attached… and he doesn't deny it. He says he thinks he loves her. Ino says nothing (she never says anything, when they declare their love, because everything she could truthfully say would only hurt them more). They hold each other in silence until the village clock-tower strikes eleven, and then he has to go, because he has some farm business or other to take care of early tomorrow. They exchange a few more kisses and he leaves, telling her that the offer stands – that it still stands, and that it stands forever…

Oh god, he's got it bad. Ino shuts the door behind him and leans against it with a sigh.

"Man, he's so in love with you. It's disgusting."

Hidan's voice in the darkness startles her; she had almost forgotten that he was there.

"He's sweet, and I feel bad," says Ino, enjoying the coolness of the door on her warm shoulders. "This was only supposed to be a summer fling. I told him that all along. I didn't think he'd fall so hard…"

"Seriously? You're surprised? How could he _not_?" says Hidan, materializing out of the shadows in front of her. "Compared to the bumpkins around here… look at you. You blow his damn mind."

Ino smiles a small smile, because she doesn't really do false modesty. "Yeah, I know."

"Probably the minds of all his buddies, too," muses Hidan, his eyes a sly glint of mauve in the dark.

"Oh, come on," says Ino. "The women here aren't that bad."

"Don't be so damn naïve," says Hidan. "Here, I'll tell you a secret, angel-slut."

He leans into her and pushes her hair out of the way so that his mouth hovers over her ear. "They all think about you when they're fucking their fat-ass, boring wives."

"You're awful," says Ino, half-giggling, half-disapproving. "His friends are good guys."

"Exactly," says Hidan. "They're guys."

Ino shakes her head. "Why am I even talking to you about this? Like you know anything at all."

"I'm a guy," shrugs Hidan. " _Just a guy_ , actually. As you so _kindly_ reminded me today."

"Right. Well, try not to think about me too much when you fuck your fat boring wife," says Ino.

He snorts. He is standing close enough to her that she feels the breath of it across her collarbones.

"Funny, angel-slut."

"Just following your questionable line of reasoning," says Ino.

"If I fuck someone, she's not going to be fat, or boring, or a wife," says Hidan, staring down at her, standing too close.

Ino gasps in mock indignation. "Hidan. This is the second time tonight you've suggested that you'd entertain the possibility of sinning in such a _dreadful_ way. I'm shocked and appalled."

Hidan looks away from her. "Hey, I haven't made a sacrifice in a long-ass time."

Ino is not sure what the connection between the two things is, but clearly, to him, there is one. She has a small suspicion.

"Does making a sacrifice give you a… a kind of release?" asks Ino.

Hidan looks at the ceiling and then closes his eyes. "You have… no idea."

"I see," says Ino.

So, he's so fucked in the head that his arousal and religious zeal conflate into one. He is one horny, deprived, confused priest, and Ino pities him for it.

Hidan looks down at her and his eyes are darker than before, a real purple now.

"Not fair," he says, hooking a finger into the strap of her negligee. "Buttkiss got to undo your zipper."

Ino shrugs his hand away. "You got to watch. I hope it was good for you."

Hidan gives her a slow smile that kind of creeps her out. "You know… it really was."

"Great."

"Killed a couple million babies."

"Gross," says Ino.

And then, immediately, she's curious. "…Did you really?"

"Maybe I'm joking," says Hidan, but he doesn't meet her eyes. He tugs at her strap again. "I was supposed to undo the zipper."

Ino holds his hand and stills it. "It was his birthday. Not yours."

"Oh, yeah," says Hidan. "It's my birthday tomorrow. I forgot to tell you."

Ino gives him her most sardonic look.

The clock-tower strikes midnight.

"… today," says Hidan. "Technically."

Ino shakes her head and makes for the bedroom. "Goodnight, Hidan. No more sinful thoughts, now."

He stares darkly at her as she swishes away.

VVV


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7  
**

 _What hurts the soul,  
My soul adores.  
_\- W.B. Yeats

It is mid-August. The rains have only occasionally let up sufficiently to be called a drizzle, but otherwise continued steadily. In the quaint little hamlet of Kurashiki, there is water everywhere, and there are waterlilies everywhere.

Ino refuses to even glance at them.

Sonkei and the other farmers in the vicinity are worried about their crops, which have yellowed and are threatening to rot in their harrows after so many sunless weeks. Sonkei's pond has swollen well past its borders, and he mentions to Ino one night that he lost some calves to it, and one of his dogs, too, that tried to herd them to safety.

Ino feels awful. Why does she feel like it's her fault? For fuck's sake, she has no bearing on the weather.

As for Hidan, he spends inordinate amounts of time praying. And, now that he is well enough to roam, he also disappears from Ino's apartment frequently. Ino suspects that he may be praying for, and looking for, his missing arm himself. He often returns to her apartment soaked and stinking of swamp-muck, but then again, it's hard to go anywhere these days and not get soaked and filthy…

In the back of her mind, she suspects that his search is entirely futile, and that there is only one with the dubious blessing of being able to find his pieces and put him back together. But that line of thought is quashed as soon as it begins.

Ino misses the sun dearly, misses _normalcy_ dearly, and if it wasn't for her promise to her parents and to Kiku to stay until September, she would be out of here tomorrow.

She sighs as she leans against a window-pane in Kiku's shop and watches the heavy grey sky pour out its relentless burden of rain. Business is not great right now – with this flooding, people have things on their minds other than flowers. Her shift at the store has been an utter waste of time: it is 7:00 p.m. and she served a grand total of one customer today, and it was Sonkei, buying her one of her own flower arrangements, just because he is stupidly sweet like that. (They have a quickie in the bathroom, because no-one is going to interrupt anyway. It is the highlight of her day.)

At 7:30 p.m., Ino puts up the closed sign, locks up, and stomps to her apartment in a rather bad mood.

"Bitch ahoy," says Hidan when she slams the door shut behind her and all but drops her flowers to the floor.

He also doesn't look like he's in the best mood. Ino brushes past him without saying anything, because she doesn't feel like dealing with him right now.

It might be just her imagination, but she thinks he smells like blood.

He sits in the dark living room as she undresses. Ino suspects that he may have just done one of his rituals. She doesn't ask about it, because she really, really doesn't want to know.

He stares at her through the bedroom door as she steps out of her work clothes and into shorts and a tank top. He's seen her do it a dozen times before, this post-work routine, but tonight he is intense and broody. She can practically feel his eyes on her, a violet, violating touch along her breasts, her thighs, her ass.

She approaches the couch to sit next to him, but something about him is unsettling her at the moment; that perhaps-imagined whiff of blood, that intensity in his stare. She makes a detour to the kitchen instead under the pretext of making something to drink.

"Tea?" she asks, in an effort to normalize this weird tension.

"No," he says, in a voice that sounds much more hoarse than usual.

He perturbs her further by following her into the kitchen and standing far too close to her as she plugs in the kettle. Ino turns to tell him to get the hell out of her personal space, but then she catches his gaze. That makes her hold her tongue; he kind of has crazy eyes right now.

He _definitely_ smells like blood; the thick scent of it lingers on his skin. And if he smells like blood, then he did his Jashinist ritual sacrifice thing. That would explain why, in this moment, his eyes are almost luminous – he is still high on it, high on the intensity of his communion with his god.

And Ino doesn't really know how to deal with him like this. She is used to whiny Hidan, bitchy Hidan, playful Hidan. Not crazed, fevered, I-just-killed-someone-and-I-liked-it Hidan. This one, with his religious mania alight in his eyes, kind of scares her.

Ino squeezes past him to fetch the flower arrangement that she left by the door; it gives her a pretext to remove herself from his immediate vicinity. She sets the vase on the kitchen table and tweaks at the placement of the flowers a little, to pass the time between now and the kettle whistling.

It is uncomfortable in here – tense, and Ino is apprehensive. Her instincts are never wrong, so she knows that she has reason to be on edge right now.

Hidan stares at her with an unnerving fixation as she pretends to fix the flowers at a safe distance from him, on the other side of the kitchen table.

"Who are those from?" asks Hidan.

"I think you already know the answer," says Ino.

"You saw him today."

"Yeah."

"Did you fuck him?"

Ino looks up. "Remind me why that's any of your damn business?"

The kettle whistles. Hidan unplugs it with a vicious tug and makes his way towards her.

They are chest to chest now. Ino does not understand what is happening, but she doesn't like it. Hidan smells like blood and death. She turns her head away from him.

He takes her chin and turns her face towards him, forcefully. "So you did fuck him. Why does he get to fuck you, and I'm only allowed to _watch_ , if I'm lucky?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Which word didn't you understand, angel-slut?"

Normally, this comment would piss Ino right the fuck off and warrant a slap upside the head. But right now, Hidan is verging on the crazy, the dangerous kind, and Ino doesn't quite dare.

She pulls her chin out of his grasp. "What is _wrong_ with you? He's my boyfriend. You aren't. You're a priest with – I thought – some kind of vow of chastity. Of course he gets to fuck me, and you don't."

"See, that's what I don't get," says Hidan, in a low, rough voice, like he's screamed too much recently and almost lost his voice. "I don't get why Jashin's little whore of an angel fucks some random farmer, when I'm his most goddamn faithful servant. Shouldn't he be _rewarding_ me or something?"

"My thing with the farmer isn't about Jashin," says Ino.

" _Everything_ is about Jashin," says Hidan, fervor making his gaze hot.

"No, it's not. Get a grip on yourself," says Ino, pushing him away with a palm against his chest.

Hidan looks down at where her hand presses into his sternum. He holds his hand over hers and presses it into his flesh even harder. "How did you know I stuck it right there? You're good, angel-slut."

"What are you _talking_ about?"

"I killed for Jashin today – it's been too long – it was fuckin' _incredible_ ," says Hidan, looking at the ceiling as he presses her hand even harder into his breastbone. His eyes turn heavenwards in the memory of his murder-bliss and Ino feels his pulse race crazily under her fingertips.

He looks down at her and continues breathlessly. "And then, when I was at my highest, and I could _feel_ Jashin, like a fucking supernova going off in my brain, do you know what he showed me?"

Ino stares at him with wide eyes and shakes her head mutely.

He drops her hand. A finger and a thumb press into her jaw and tilt her face up towards his. Their eyes lock, and Ino is afraid.

"He showed me your face. What does that even fucking mean?"

Ino stares at him wordlessly, because she truly has no answer.

"Why did Jashin send you to me, and make you so fucking beautiful, and make me _want_ you, when I'm not _supposed_ to?"

"You don't want me. You can't possibly, because you know that anything other than slaughter is a sin," says Ino, repeating, from some distant memory, one of his morbid dictums.

"Slaughter," repeats Hidan. "Like those little deaths, yeah?"

Ino tries to turn away again, but he doesn't let her. Fingers press bruises into her jaw. They exchange breaths and the smell of blood makes Ino's stomach roil.

"I'm talking to you, angel-bitch. You wanna slaughter me a bit? You wanna show me some of those little deaths?"

He's confused, he's high under the influence of Jashin, he's crazy. Ino doesn't like it one bit. She grabs his wrist and breaks his grip on her chin with difficulty.

"No, I don't. Back _off_ , Hidan."

She shoves him away. He takes an easy step back and then he is in her space again, resisting her pushes effortlessly. She feels his muscles under her palms, taut and ready, and she remembers that he is a shinobi as well as a priest. And he is stronger than she is, much stronger, even if he is missing an arm. Their skirmish is brief; she finds both of her wrists caught in his single hand and pulled painfully behind her.

"Shh, angel-girl," he says, breathing into her ear, stilling her with his body pressed hard against hers.

"You need to let go of me," says Ino.

"Do you love him? Farmer-boy?"

" _No_ ," answers Ino with a vehemence borne by honesty. "He's a summer fling."

"Who do you love?"

She looks up and sees those fanatical eyes, and she knows what the right answer is at this particular moment.

"Jashin," says Ino.

"That's right," says Hidan, breathing heat onto her neck. "And everything we do is for him. _Everything_ …"

He seems to be on the verge of some kind of breakdown or breakthrough, Ino isn't sure which, and she sure as hell doesn't want to find out. "Yes. You're right. Why don't you sit and calm down, and we'll talk…"

"No, I don't think so," says Hidan, pressing himself in even closer. "I kinda like how this feels…"

He doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't understand what he's feeling, because this religion of his has taken his normal functions of arousal and excitement and made them into a religious manifestation, something he chases for a high. He is so, so confused, and it is so, so dangerous right now.

"Hidan," says Ino, trying to use a language that he will understand in his current state. "This is _sinning_."

"Is it?" breathes Hidan. "Feels so good, though. And you're his fuckin' angel… feels like being close to him, when I pray…"

He trails off and she feels his shaky breath on her cheek; he is breathing her in like she's a wisp of sacred incense or smoke from an altar candle. He reveres her, but he also wants her, and Ino has some serious doubts as to his capacity to handle these two compulsions…

"What are you _doing_?" says Ino when she feels his lips brush the side of her neck.

"I don't know," breathes Hidan, "but I – fuck, I _like_ it."

She tries to break away and he stills her, forcibly. Then he makes the mistake of looking down at her and allowing her full eye contact – and Ino has had just about enough of being manhandled by a lunatic monk.

She activates her mind-body switch, fully, for the first time since she's met Hidan. Her body slumps against the counter and then she is in his head, smashing through the barriers of his will and taking full control of him.

She fills him with the fury of her celestial wrath.

 _How dare you._

Her voice in his head is amplified to a hundred times its usual volume. It reverberates through him, carrying with it the explosion of her anger. She feels one of his sinuses burst into a nosebleed from the force of it.

 _Have you completely taken leave of your senses?_

 _Is this how you worship Jashin?_

She feels his spirit – fighting her, struggling – hesitate briefly.

 _How could you? I'm the one who made you whole again._

He isn't physically capable of responding to her, since she is possessing him, but when the echoes die down, she feels the beginnings of fear, regret, guilt.

 _I should blow your brains from the inside out for what you did tonight._

 _I think I told you to sit your ass on the couch and calm the fuck down._

She begins to move him. Hidan pushes back against her surprisingly hard, and the battle of wills that ensues is long and draining for the both of them – but this is Ino's specialty, and her determination and experience win out, and she presses him into submission enough to make him move.

Ino makes him lay her limp body gently on the kitchen floor. She feels something as he looks down at her unconscious body – a turmoil of veneration, adoration, and want, so dense, complicated, and contradictory, that she can almost understand his actions, though she cannot excuse them.

Hidan's hands shake through the combined strain of her unyielding willpower and his own resistance. She makes him stand, then take slow strides all the way to the couch, where she sits his ass down.

His muscles are flexed with his continued defiance, but Ino's grip on him is iron. She makes him stare at his reflection in the black rain-washed windows and holds him there until his blood calms and his muscles start to relax because they have no other choice; he is just about drained.

 _You're going to sit here until I give you permission to move_.

Ino feels his acquiescence ripple by and decides that that is good enough, because she is exhausted too, and she would rather keep herself a reserve of strength if he ends up not cooperating.

But he will cooperate. Wafting around her now are the slow currents of his faith, and regret, and self-loathing. And the crazy in the background. Always the crazy.

Ino pulls out of his head and she is not gentle about it. She hears him swear as she regains her own body and gets back to her feet. When she looks over to him, she sees that he has his face in his hand and that he has grown pale; in fact, he looks ready to puke. That would be the sickening plunge of nausea that accompanies her departure from more… challenging hosts. She feels the beginnings of a headache from the strain of the experience, herself.

He does not move, so Ino resumes making her interrupted tea, hoping that the familiar activity will buy her some time to gather her thoughts. It doesn't really work; there are a lot of thoughts to gather and they are all over the damn place.

So she seizes her courage with both hands – as well as two steaming mugs, and some tissues for his nosebleed – and makes her way to the sofa.

He still has his face in his palm and doesn't look at her.

"Nausea, or shame?" asks Ino, seating herself next to him, to show him that she isn't scared of him, though she still kind of is.

He takes a shaky breath. Blood runs down his nose, past his mouth and to his chin. "…Fuck off."

Ino offers him the tissues. He takes them and manages to stem his nosebleed and clean up the worst of it.

"The tea will help with the nausea," says Ino. "Can't help you with the shame."

Hidan raises his head enough to see the mug that Ino has placed on the coffee table in front of him. His eyes follow the play of the steam.

"You're fucking giving me tea right now?"

"Yes," says Ino.

"You're too damn forgiving," says Hidan.

"It's poisoned," says Ino sweetly.

This takes him by surprise; he looks at her, then cracks an unexpected grin and takes a number of generous gulps of the scalding tea. Of course, they both know it isn't poisoned, and even if it was, it wouldn't kill him anyway.

He puts the mug back onto the table. Then they sit in awkward silence for a while, sipping occasionally at their tea, for lack of other things to do. Ino understands after a few minutes that the onus will be on her to address the elephant in the room, because he sure as hell isn't going to do it. In fact, if she leaves it too long, he'll probably disappear to pray or something, and they really, really need to clear the air here…

"So…" says Ino, "can we talk about what just happened?"

Hidan runs a finger along the bridge of his nose and sighs a long, shuddery sigh. Ino is patient as he gathers his thoughts, it gives her time to press a two-fingered massage into each of her achy temples.

"Something's wrong with me," says Hidan into his hand.

"Mm," agrees Ino. "Several things, I think."

Hidan turns to her with a clenched jaw. "Thanks for the input. Helpful as _shit_."

Ino shrugs; she was just being honest.

He runs his fingers through his silvery hair. "This is all your fault."

" _My_ fault?" repeats Ino. "How is this my fault?"

"You need to stop showing up in the middle of my goddamn ritual, for one. That threw me for a fuckin' loop."

"I didn't _do_ that," says Ino. "I swear on Jashin's – whatever's important – his ballsack."

"Yeah, right," says Hidan. "It's probably another of your angel powers. Like making it rain forever."

Ino sputters. "Excuse me? So now the rain is my fault, too?"

"Duh. I see the way you look at it with your angel-stare. You're causing it, that's obvious."

He does not know how close to being right he is. So, of course, Ino shakes her head. "I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life."

" _Really_."

He stares at her. She crosses her arms and looks away from him.

"Let me tell you something, kittentits," says Hidan. "Angels are shitty liars."

"Whatever," says Ino. "We're supposed to be talking about you, not me."

"Can I just fucking point out that you're the one _causing_ the issues, here?"

"Um, _no_ ," flares Ino. "These are all _your_ issues–"

He opens his mouth to interrupt her, but she holds up her hand. "No. They are. Okay? You're unstable, mentally. You're incomplete, physically. You're obsessed with your god to the point of fanaticism, but you haven't been communing with him properly, so you haven't been having your – _deathgasms_ , or whatever they are – I don't really get it… and you're horny because of that, I think, and you're not allowed to be horny, so you're hopelessly conflicted and even more unbalanced than usual. There. Those are your issues."

"Wow. Nice summary," says Hidan sardonically. "Since you understand everything so fucking clearly, how about you explain why Jashin is showing me your face in the middle of my quote-unquote deathgasms?"

"I don't _know_ ," says Ino.

There is only sincerity in her face, because she truly doesn't know. He turns away, sighs, and musses up his hair with an anxious hand.

"It's _weird_. He's never shown me shit before except the glories of slaughter. Why your beautiful fucking face?"

He stares at her, then, as though staring at her beautiful fucking face in the shadows of the living room will give him the answer. Ino stares back mutely, unable to offer him any enlightenment.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asks. "What does it mean?"

"I don't know. Maybe he showed me to you as a reminder," says Ino. "That I'm still here to help you…"

This suggestion is emitted with a small amount of guilt; after all, Ino has been deliberately avoiding helping him find his arm, because she is sick of being used against her will by Jashin in his machinations and she is trying to prove that he doesn't control her, or, even better, that he doesn't exist… and Jashin is drowning the village in retaliation, maybe, or maybe it's all a huge cosmic coincidence, hell if she knows anymore…

"A _reminder_?" repeats Hidan. "Like I need a reminder. I see you every goddamn day, I sleep with you every goddamn night. My every goddamn movement in this _body_ is thanks to you finding my pieces and putting me back together… like I'd _ever_ fucking forget that…"

"Okay, okay," says Ino, raising a hand in a gesture of conciliation. "It was just a suggestion…"

"There's another thing," says Hidan, and he looks decidedly angry. "You're right. I _am_ fucking horny. What the hell is up with that?"

Because Ino is one of the most stunningly beautiful women he has ever seen, and on top of that, he thinks she's an angel, and he totally has a worshippy crush on her, that's why. But perhaps now is not the time for her to point that out.

"Since I found Jashin I've never _once_ been distracted, or tempted… and there have been hundreds of women." He gives her a look. "Why did he send _you_ to me? I mean, _look_ at you. Why not some fuckin' uggo?"

So he knows that she is stunningly beautiful, and she doesn't need to point it out.

"Maybe it's a test," says Ino.

"Don't be stupid. Jashin doesn't do _tests_. You either satisfy him, or you die trying."

"Alright, fine. An exercise in resisting worldly temptations, or something?"

"Why would I want to resist…?" says Hidan, shaking his head. "You're his angel, you do _his_ work, everything you do is for _him_ and _his_ plan, so isn't it – not wrong, to want to be near you, and… fuck, I'm so confused…"

"I don't know," says Ino, rubbing tiredly at her eyelids. "Ugh – these theological debates are _way_ over my pay grade. And they're giving me a headache. And I already _have_ a headache."

Hidan stares at the floor like a lost thing.

"I'm out of theories," says Ino eventually. "But let's have no more molestation in the kitchen. Okay?"

"I need to kill more people," says Hidan. "That'll solve _everything_."

"Wow," says Ino sarcastically. "What a _fantastic_ plan."

"I know, right?" says Hidan.

Ino opens her mouth to point out his obliviousness, but, just now, with a huge migraine coming on, it doesn't seem worth the struggle.

She presses her fingers into her temples. "I'm going to go to bed. Don't kill anyone in the meantime."

"…Sure."

He is also a shitty liar.

"Hidan."

" _Okay_ , I won't. Fuck…"

VVV


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8  
**

 _To err is human,  
To forgive, divine.  
_\- Alexander Pope

Somewhere in the vicinity of four in the morning, Ino wakes up because something is dripping cold wetness on her hand.

She looks around blearily to see Hidan standing by her bed like a _total_ creepster, holding a freshly-picked waterlily. When he sees that she is awake, he thrusts the flower into her hand properly. Then he stares at the floor.

"Hidan, what…?" says Ino groggily.

"I dunno," says Hidan. "Seemed like the right thing to do."

Ino stares at his penitent face in the semi-darkness, then at the waterlily curling its fronds around her hand. This is probably Hidan's version of an apology for last night – so she should probably keep her reaction nice, even if right now, all she wants to do is throw the flower onto the floor and stomp on it.

Instead, she sits up and places the thing in the glass of water on her bedside table.

"… Well, thank you," says Ino.

A whiff of the waterlily's sweet scent makes its way to her and the smell makes her heart beat faster; it reminds her of her ongoing defiance of his god, who is now, apparently, sending his clueless priest to her with reminders…

"Why a waterlily, specifically?" asks Ino, as casually as she can.

"They remind me of you," says Hidan.

Of course they do.

Ino feels Hidan's weight settle somewhere near her feet as he sits on the bed. Something crinkles in the dark.

Ino begins to suspect that this is all a very strange dream, because, unless she is very much mistaken, Hidan is now sitting on her bed, eating cookies.

"You want?" says Hidan, offering one to her. Ino takes it with some hesitation.

"… Where did you get these?" she asks, because in the interest of maintaining her kind of figure, cookies are not allowed in her cupboards.

"Uh," says Hidan, "I… bought them."

"You bought them."

"Yes."

"At four in the morning?"

In the penumbra of the bedroom, Ino sees his jaw stop working briefly. "…Yes."

"With what money?"

Hidan makes a show of, for once in his life, chewing with his mouth closed, and therefore being incapable of responding at the moment.

Ino raises an eyebrow. "Isn't stealing a sin?"

"Nah," says Hidan, miraculously finding the ability to talk again. "Not from filthy heathens. They don't count."

"Who breaks into a store just to steal cookies?" asks Ino, taking a bite of hers now that she is certain that they didn't come from Jashin's abyss or anything weird like that.

"Someone hungry," says Hidan, swallowing. "…That would be my guess, anyway."

" _Someone_. I can guess who. Just –"

"– don't get crumbs in the sheets," says Hidan. "I know."

Ino narrows her eyes at him, because she doesn't like being pre-empted. He waggles his eyebrows at her and chews on, looking strangely young and innocent, this silver-blond one-armed boy sitting cross-legged at the foot of her bed, eating pilfered cookies.

It is strange how innocent he looks, because Ino knows that he is actually crazy and _murderous_. Like how, you know, he killed someone yesterday, and then went all psycho-priest on her…

The cookie suddenly feels dry in Ino's mouth. She swallows with difficulty. Hidan notices the slight change in her composure and stops chewing to give her a quizzical look.

"You don't like chocolate chip," says Hidan, after having studied her. "I knew I should've taken the Oreos…"

He's lucky he's cute, because his levels of obliviousness are staggering.

"It's not that," says Ino. "It's… it's nothing."

He looks at her intently. "I don't believe you."

Ino smiles a small smile. So maybe he's not that oblivious.

"What is it?" says Hidan, pushing himself up the bed to lean against the headboard next to her. "Talk to me."

Ino bites her lip and looks at the ceiling. Does she dare ask? Does she want to know? She thinks she does, but then, what will she do if it's someone she knows…

Hidan pokes her side in an annoyingly repetitive manner. "Tell me."

"…Who did you sacrifice yesterday?" asks Ino, finally.

Clearly, this is not where he wanted the conversation to go. Hidan turns away from her, looking distinctly irritated. "Nah. You're gonna get all preachy at me."

But now that Ino has asked, she really does want to know. "Who was it, Hidan?"

"It wasn't someone from this village," says Hidan. "I followed your dumb rule. Had to walk so damn far though…"

"But _who_?" says Ino. "Who did you kill?"

"Dunno," says Hidan, shrugging as he munches on his third cookie. "A guy. He's dead now. Who cares."

"I care," says Ino. "Who was he? Someone I know?"

Hidan raises his hand in an aggravated sort of way. "How the fuck should I know? You think we introduced ourselves before I killed him?"

Ino looks away, pained.

"It was a quick death," continues Hidan when he sees her face. "If that matters. Just needed to get with Jashin fast and dirty, you know, 'cuz it had been too damn long… fuck, it was amazing… then he showed me your face – that was fuckin' _weird_ , man, I'm still thinking about what it means…"

Ino shakes her head at him and cuts off his ramble. "What if this guy had a wife? Or a family? Now he's just lying dead? This is horrible…"

"Hey, I buried him," says Hidan defensively. "…Kinda."

" _Kinda_?" repeats Ino.

"I… threw some rocks on top and stuff," says Hidan.

Ino shakes her head and runs a hand down her face. "This is awful."

"It made Jashin happy, so _you_ should be happy," says Hidan. "And, whatever. The guy jumped me first, anyway."

Ino looks up. "…He jumped you?"

"Yeah. Out of the bushes," says Hidan. "Asking me for my money."

"Wait, wait…" says Ino, struggling to piece together this convoluted story. "Backtrack. He tried to mug you first, _then_ you killed him?"

"Yeah. Like I have any money. The dumbass."

"Really…? That's kind of an important detail, Hidan."

"Money?" asks Hidan.

"Not that, the fact that he attacked you first. That changes things."

"…What? Two fuckin' seconds ago you were telling me how horrible I am for following the most basic of Jashin's teachings, just because goddamned _angels_ don't need to get their hands dirty…"

"Well – you _are_ horrible," says Ino. "But if he attacked you first, and you defended yourself, that makes you a bit less of a stone-cold murderer right now."

"But I _am_ a stone-cold murderer," says Hidan. "I'm a priest of Jashin. It's what I do. This is like, one guy, one time, there have been… a _lot_ of other times."

"Ugh," says Ino shaking her head. "Why would you tell me that? You need a _filter_ , Hidan…"

"Hey, I try not to lie to my angel," says Hidan, scratching the back of his neck. "… As a general rule, I mean. And what about all that crap about if he had a _family_ or a _wife_? That doesn't matter all of a sudden?"

"Well, I mean, it still _matters_ ," says Ino, "just – maybe he kind of deserved it more, if he was a criminal, or something? God, I don't know. It's way too late to be thinking about these things…"

Hidan does not respond; he rubs at his shoulder distractedly. "What the hell is…"

Then he looks down at his chest.

"God _damn_ it."

"What?"

Hidan turns to her and gestures at his chest, and she can see that patches of his skin have turned bright red and bumpy in a sudden and spectacular display of hives.

Ino grabs the package of cookies. Even in the darkness of her bedroom at four in the morning, she can clearly see the label indicating that the package 'CONTAINS NUTS'.

"Um?" says Ino, holding the package up to Hidan and pointing at the text in question. "You didn't read this?"

"I _obviously_ didn't," says Hidan bitchily as he rubs himself. "Who puts _nuts_ in chocolate chip cookies?"

Ino is unsympathetic. "You deserve it for stealing them in the first place."

"Thanks for the fuckin' moral lecture," says Hidan, scratching his chest vigorously.

After some more ineffectual itchy squirming in the bed and up against Ino, who pushes him away unkindly, he leaps off of the bed and makes for the kitchen.

"…Where are you going?" calls Ino.

"Just gonna go burn my skin off," says Hidan over his shoulder, offhandedly, like this is obviously the best route to take at this point.

Ino stares after him in disbelief until she hears him rustling around in the kitchen and the telltale sound of her gas stove ticking on.

She vaults from the bed and skids into the kitchen after Hidan, arriving just in time knock him away from the stove with a very solid hip-check.

"Stop that, you idiot…!" she says, switching the burners off.

"Do you _mind_?" says Hidan, regaining to his feet and looking extremely annoyed at her for interrupting. "Feels like a million goddamn ants are biting me at once and I'd rather fuckin' be burning, okay? It works, I've done it before, I just heal after –"

Ino smacks his hand away from the knobs. "I can _help_ you, you absolute moron. You don't need to _burn_ yourself. Go sit down."

Hidan opens his mouth to argue, but Ino gives him a hard look, and apparently he remembers what happened when he did not follow her instructions to sit down the night before – so, with much itching and bitching, he goes to sit down.

Ino rustles around in her medicine cabinet as Hidan writhes dramatically on the couch. Finally, she finds what she is looking for: a tube of antihistamine cream.

"Here," she says, dropping it onto his lap.

Hidan stares at it suspiciously. "Cream."

"Yes, _cream_. Antihistamine lotion. Put it on."

" _Anti_ histamine? What's a histamine and why don't I want one?"

Ino glares celestial-blue impatience at him and he quails. He holds out his sole hand so that Ino can squeeze the cream into it and he smears it onto himself generously, if haphazardly.

"It should kick in in a couple minutes," says Ino. "And then you'll thank me. And it'll be a hell of a lot less traumatic than your dumb solution. Burning your skin off… I've never heard anything so stupid in my life…"

Hidan doesn't look terribly convinced by the cream, perhaps because his usual fix provides an immediate distraction from the itching in the form of godawful amounts of pain. He reaches around to rub it into his back, and then his shoulder, and then, after reaching ineffectually for his left shoulder blade and lower back, he looks expectantly at Ino.

"…No," says Ino.

"I only have one hand. Come on," says Hidan. "This is _your_ dumb solution. Plus, angels are supposed to do this healing shit."

"No."

"Bet you'd do it for Farmer Fuckboy," says Hidan darkly, straining to reach a spot on his back.

" _Sonkei_ doesn't steal cookies and then have an allergic reaction to them that I'm somehow responsible for fixing," says Ino.

"But I _need_ your help, angel-girl."

"No."

"Please?" says Hidan.

Ino watches him struggle pathetically until she can't take it anymore. She makes a sound of frustration and plucks the tube from his hand.

"Wow," says Hidan as Ino squeezes cream into her palm. "That really _is_ a magic word…"

Ino rubs the stuff into his back with brisk gestures. " _How_ … just _how_ … am I awake at four in the morning, saving a priest from his idiotic self-immolation and giving him a goddamn backrub…"

"Destiny," says Hidan, leaning into her with an appreciative sigh.

Ino smacks his shoulder so he sits up straight again. "You want to know something?"

"What?"

"You are the worst pet rock _ever_."

VVV

The next morning, Ino awakens from her interrupted night of sleep feeling extremely groggy. She cracks a bleary eye open, just enough to see the dial on the clock indicating that it is 8:20 a.m.

Then her sleepy brain struggles to answer the all-important question: what day is it?

… It's Tuesday. With a muffled swear, Ino kicks off the covers – she has ten minutes to make it to her shift downstairs on time. She clicks the bedside table light on and then all but flinches at the sight of Hidan's waterlily still in her water glass, blooming beautifully. She had forgotten about that damn thing.

Ino slides the glass away brusquely and proceeds to ignore the flower as she slips on some clothes and pulls her hair into a high ponytail.

When she is ready to leave a few minutes later, Ino stands next to the bed. She looks at Hidan, who is sleeping sprawled across most of the bed in open-mouthed oblivion, then back at the gorgeous flower.

Hidan mutters something in his sleep about cake. Satisfied that he is still asleep, Ino plucks the flower out of the glass and makes for the kitchen, pulling the bedroom door shut behind her.

Then she passes the waterlily through the in-sink garbage disposal with extreme prejudice.

If Hidan asks, she'll tell him she incorporated the flower into one of her arrangements in the shop, because it was especially beautiful.

The sweet smell of crushed petals lingers; Ino lights a candle before heading downstairs.

VVV


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9  
**

 _She made three paces through the room,  
She saw the water-lily bloom.  
_\- Tennyson

Weeks pass. It is now late August, and still the rain. Still the rain, and Ino's resolution has not swayed; the weather is _not_ her problem, nor is this waterlily infestation.

It is only when she is ringing up her third order of yellow chrysanthemums that Ino clues in that, today, this has been a pattern. Yellow chrysanthemums are funeral flowers, condolence flowers – death flowers.

Ino looks up to the old man who is buying them, who owns the fruit stand down the way.

She hesitates for a moment before speaking. "Can I ask – who are these for? This isn't the first time today that someone's bought some…"

The old man shakes his head sadly. "You haven't heard? The grocer's twins drowned yesterday. They were playing on the old bridge and part of it collapsed – all this damn rain…"

"That's – that's awful," says Ino. She struggles to get the words out; her mouth has suddenly run dry.

The old man glares out of the rain-washed window. "Funeral's tomorrow morning. Those girls didn't deserve such a death – a sad thing, a very sad thing…"

Ino wraps the flowers with hands that shake slightly. She hands them to the old man and outright refuses payment, despite his insistence.

When he finally leaves, Ino sits on the tall stool behind the counter and rests her forehead on her palms. Her head is reeling. This information – these deaths – have just changed the game. This was between her and the entity called Jashin, if that entity even exists. There was never supposed to be any impact on other people, much less _deaths_ …

If there are lives being lost because of this rain, and the rain _might_ be because of her…

Kiku comes in to relieve Ino at noon. Ino half-listens to her cousin's usual chitchat as they switch shifts and she takes her leave as soon as she can.

All that Ino wants to do, when she gets back to her apartment, is take a long hot bath to rid herself of this sticky, sick feeling of guilt, and then finish that bottle of white wine in the fridge. But when she gets upstairs, that idiot Hidan is in the shower, because he probably only woke up at noon and lazed around like the useless bum he is.

Ino slams her palm against the bathroom door and tells him to hurry the hell up in there.

Hidan snarks back a rude something or other to her through the door that she can't make out (probably for the best, for him). A few more fist-slams and some long minutes later, he comes out, grousing at her for being so impatient – until he sees her tear-filled eyes.

"Jizzbreath dump you?" he asks, sounding offensively hopeful about the prospect.

"No. Leave me alone."

Ino pushes past him, slams the bathroom door behind her, strips to her panties, and draws herself a bath. As it fills, she stares at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are bright with tears that are barely held back. Two little girls are dead. Because of the rain.

The rain is because of her.

No, it's not.

It's not her fault.

It's _not_ her fault.

…But if it is?

There has been property damage – unfortunate, but. There has been loss of livestock – sad, but. Now, though, there has been death, human death – and this, Ino cannot shrug away.

Why did it have to be little girls? Why couldn't it be someone no-one cares about that drowned? Like Hidan?

Ino stares at her distraught reflection and blinks her tear-bright eyes.

If this is how Jashin is playing the game, then Ino does not want to play anymore.

"Alright, Jashin," Ino whispers into the mirror. "You win. Asshole."

Something like a sigh ripples almost imperceptibly around her, like the vice-grip of a vast and powerful will has loosened its hold on the world slightly.

Something slackens.

"Hey, cool!" comes Hidan's voice through the door. "It just stopped raining!"

Ino watches herself grow pale in the mirror.

It's coincidence. For fuck's sake, it's coincidence. Two words from her lips do _not_ control the weather. There's no way.

Why does she smell waterlilies? She threw away that shampoo weeks ago in a fit of defiance…

Oh, no. Oh god no. Ino watches herself grow even paler as she realizes that the scent is not synthetic. It is real. In the mirror, her lips are almost white. She turns with dread-filled slowness to the bathtub that is now half-full. A waterlily bobs on the surface of the water, unfurling delicate petals of mauve and white.

And its fronds are lovingly laced around a man's severed arm, cut cleanly at the shoulder.

VVV

Ino walks out of the bathroom clad only in her bra and panties, holding Hidan's dripping arm by the wrist, rendered utterly mute by shock.

Hidan glances at her and looks ready to whine about her state of undress – until he sees the arm in her hand.

His jaw drops. She tells him, in a voiceless whisper, that it was in the bathtub.

He says, no way. No _fucking_ way, he was _just_ in there, it wasn't there…

Ino holds the arm up to him, and she hopes that he will explain this, then, please, because now she is afraid.

And the waterlily that was curled around the arm falls gently to the floor with a soft wet sound.

They stare at each other for a long time in this moment, this moment when they have been brushed by the wings of a power far greater than themselves.

And in that moment, in his eyes, she is really divine. She sees him reeling from it. This is the final, irrefutable attestation that she is the agent of his god on earth. He is breathing quickly; his heart's wild pulses are all but visible in his bare chest. His eyes travel from her white face to her toes, and back up, and he is pale, too, because he is in the presence of a little piece of his deity, because this is indisputable, now, undeniable proof that she is an angel of Jashin.

He drops to his knees in front of her, wordless, breathless, and holds her to him, his face pressed into her stomach. Ino feels as though she is about to faint and knots a hand into his hair so that she doesn't fall down, and in her other hand is the arm, dripping slow drops of water into the reverent silence that has fallen around them.

Eyes fervent meet eyes afraid. She cannot hold Hidan's gaze, it is too much – too much truth.

And she wants to be sick. Because until now, she could plausibly explain everything. Until now, inconvenient occurrences could be more-or-less reasoned away. But this? His arm – and that damned waterlily – literally materialized out of nothing. The unceasing rain _stopped_ as the words dropped from her lips. How do you hand-wave those things away?

Ino swallows hard. Hidan looks up at her and his eyes are alight with a feverish adoration. It frightens her, because she doesn't deserve it, but at the same time, this arm in her hand tells her, maybe she does.

They stare at each other, one aflame with the affirmation of his belief, and one starting to think that, really, she kind of has to believe, now, or she would be crazy in a different way.

The final drops of rain trickle down the window in deliberate serpentine lines, full of meanings that Ino cannot decipher.

VVV

So what do you do, when the urge to puke wears off and you're left with a priest kneeling at your feet, and his severed arm dangling from your fingertips?

Ino pulls her hand out of Hidan's hair and rests it on his shoulder instead.

"Shall we… put this back on?" she asks in a small voice.

Yes. Yes, this is a good idea. This will give her something to do, occupy her hands and her brain, so she doesn't have to think too much about what just happened, and what it all means, and come to terms with the fact that she kind of _has_ to believe in Jashin, now, and thus become one of the crazy ones…

Hidan looks at the arm in her hand and presses his face into her flat stomach, and she thinks he kisses it, and then he regains his feet. He looks quite as pale as she feels, though his gaze is a heady combination of vindication and veneration.

With his good hand, Hidan grabs Ino by the wrist and leads her to the sofa. She all but falls into it, relieved to be off of her shock-weak legs. He sits next to her and politely holds his arm in his lap while she drops her face into her hands and mutters half-thoughts of astonishment and alarm, because how, how the hell, just… _how_ …

And Hidan just looks at her in a kind of awe, because he has been dead-certain in his faith since the beginning, but this kind of celestial confirmation does not come often, and, as of this moment, his convictions have been utterly affirmed until the day he dies, if that day ever comes.

The severed arm in Hidan's lap lies in the periphery of Ino's vision. She is ready to pull this story to a close. This is the final piece of the puzzle, the last loose end – and once she takes care of it, she will be _done_ with this whole Jashin business.

She stands in front of Hidan and he scoots to the edge of his seat to give her access to his cleanly-sliced shoulder. Ino inspects the arm and finds that it, like the arm and leg before it, is warm and the cut is as impeccable and bloodless as though a blade had sliced it a millisecond before.

She presses the arm to Hidan's shoulder and holds it there as she threads in some chakra stitches.

Behind her, through the big bay windows, the heavy clouds part, for the first time in weeks and weeks, and the August sun at high noon blazes though. Ino is backlit by this light; it illuminates her in a halo of white-gold, catching her fair skin, making her hair glow.

It seems a bit _much_ to Ino, who feels the heat of it surround her, sees her radiant reflection in Hidan's eyes. A bit heavy-handed. But then, Jashin is not a subtle god. (Or, perhaps, with oblivious idiots for followers, he _cannot_ be a subtle god.)

She can almost hear low tones of monastic chanting as the sun's rays dance and dazzle around Ino and say, this is her, this is my angel, as she reattaches his priest's final missing piece.

And Hidan stares up at her, soft mauve adulation.

Ino feels her chakra emerge from her palm and do things well beyond the scope of her training as a medic. Nerves rejoin each other and become one again, the intricate complexities of the shoulder joint are resolved with a casual surge, cartilage, tendons, and bones, are shifted into their proper places in ways that would normally require surgery…

None of these things surprise Hidan. Of course, for him, this kind of unworldly proficiency is a normal thing, since she is his god's holy hand on earth. To him, none of this is weird, because it is all intended by Jashin, it is all _what must be_ , divinely ordained and therefore Right. It makes Ino a little jealous, his open-hearted acceptance, his serenity, because she still feels kind of like barfing.

He is docile as Ino pulls him towards her so that she can work her chakra down his shoulder blade. He leans his forehead into her tummy with a sigh that tickles her bellybutton.

She is almost done. Ino runs her hand down the scar that loops around his shoulder – hardly a scar, a hairline seam – and Hidan's arm is reattached now, impeccably so.

He seems kind of spaced out, leaning his face dreamily against her tummy.

"Finished," says Ino quietly.

Hidan sits up, looks at his reattached arm, raises his hand and moves his fingers experimentally. They are slow to respond, but they do respond, though shakily.

He takes Ino's wrist with those same trembling fingers, pulls it towards him and presses a slow, reverent kiss onto the back of her hand. Then he holds her hand between his palms and presses it to his forehead, and Ino isn't sure, but she thinks he might be about to cry.

"Wonder-girl," he says.

And that is all he says. Ino looks down and suspects that she is the subject of some crazy fervent prayers right now. And the moment is growing too long and he is loving her too much…

She _really_ needs that wine.

VVV

"Well," says Ino briskly, a long minute later. "I think my work here is done."

Hidan looks up as though waking from a daze. Ino takes advantage of the moment to resume possession of her hand and makes for the kitchen to pour herself a cool glass of Riesling.

A few swallows of that on her empty stomach and she feels much, _much_ better.

Ino rejoins Hidan on the couch and watches him play with his newly-attached arm over the rim of her wineglass. His eyes have lost some of the heat of devotion; he is back in the real world now, insofar as Hidan is ever in the real world.

"How about you make yourself useful and go grab me some crackers," says Ino as Hidan experimentally gropes at all nearby objects with his newly-attached hand, including various parts of Ino.

Hidan disappears eagerly on this quest. He comes back with a bag of pretzels clutched weakly in his left hand, instead of the requested crackers.

"Can't grab the box," he says, when Ino asks how he messed up this one simple instruction.

"You couldn't use your other hand?"

"No. Have to practice this one."

He's really, _really_ , lucky he's so cute.

"Fine," says Ino, rolling her eyes and snatching the pretzels.

They sit in companionable silence on the couch as Ino drinks her wine and pensively sucks the salt off of a pretzel. (Hidan crunches on five of them at once like some kind of savage.)

"So, today was a weird day–" says Ino.

"It was one of the best days of my fucking life," says Hidan, and he _means_ every syllable of this rude interruption.

"– okay," says Ino. "That's great for you. What _I_ wanted to say was, this is actually good timing. I only have a few weeks left here. I'll have finished both my summer projects."

Hidan turns to her with a mouth full of pretzels.

"Where are you going?" he asks, spraying crumbs everywhere.

" _Really_ ," says Ino as she wipes one off of her cheek with a fingertip.

"Sorry," says Hidan, peppering more crap in her face as he apologizes for peppering crap in her face.

Ino makes a sound of disgust and pushes him away from her across the sofa until he is squished against the armrest and squawks out his disapproval and more crumbs.

Satisfied that she is out of range, Ino sits back and takes another sip of wine. "Back to Konoha. My work here is done. Kiku's shop is running on its own two legs, you're running on your own two legs… It's time to go home. It's been a _very_ weird summer."

"But what about me?"

Ino looks at Hidan blankly. "What _about_ you?"

"You're just going to leave me?"

Ino raises an eyebrow. "Well, yeah. And you can't stay here, either – Kiku has a tenant arriving in a couple of weeks. And, you know – she doesn't know you exist."

Hidan seems at a loss, which surprises Ino. But then again, in Ino's head, all of this has been a summer thing. Perhaps that is not the case for others – for Sonkei, for Hidan, for Jashin… oh, no. Ino makes a conscious decision not think of that last possibility.

"I'm gone at the end of the summer," says Ino. "You know this. You've _known_ this for a while. Don't get too attached to me. Okay?"

"But –"

"No. Be a big boy and go back to doing whatever you were doing before you got chopped up."

"But that was before I knew you," says Hidan with a whine.

"So?"

"You change everything."

"I really don't," says Ino.

"You're a physical manifestation of my god on this earth," says Hidan, gesturing to his newly-attached arm. "You change _every-fucking-thing_. Trust me."

Ino shakes her head. Hidan switches tacks. "I thought you were going to bring me back to your village because I was an interesting phenomenon."

"You were," says Ino. "Back when you were a disembodied head."

She looks him up and down, this pretty man sitting half-naked on her sofa who kind of worships her. "Now you're just a random guy."

"A _random guy_?" says Hidan. He presses his hands to his heart. "Angel-cake. We are so much more than that."

Ino purses her lips in an unconvinced pout, then resumes sucking on her pretzel.

"I'm still immortal!" says Hidan. "I'm _fascinating_."

"Meh," says Ino.

"Do I have to cut my head off again to be interesting?"

"Don't be stupid."

"I'll do it if you tell me to."

He looks ready to do it, too.

Ino shakes her head and gets up. "… I need more wine."

VVV


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10  
**

 _We melt into each other with phrases.  
_ \- Virginia Woolfe

It is a gorgeous late summer evening and Ino is getting ready to have dinner with cousin Kiku and her husband. She's in a _great_ mood; today has been wonderful, no Jashin, no deaths, and plus, Kiku is an incredible cook and she's promised to make that cherry tomato salad that Ino likes so much…

Just as she waltzes out of the bathroom after her shower, Hidan clambers into the apartment through the window, back from doing god-knows-what, god-knows-where.

"Hi Hidan," says Ino musically as she brushes past him in her towel, wafting flowery shampoo and steam.

"…Hi."

Hidan follows Ino into the bedroom, looking more and more morose as he takes in her bubbly mood.

"You're ditching me tonight. _Again_."

"Yep," says Ino, perching herself in front of her vanity. "What gave it away?"

"You're fuckin' _happy_ ," says Hidan.

Ino laughs. "Aw. Sometimes I'm happy when I'm staying in with you."

Hidan collapses onto the bed languidly, watching as Ino towel-dries her hair. "Oh yeah? Like when?"

Ino glances up at him and has to deliberately avoid falling into a stare, because for some reason he is looking very attractive right now, lounging amidst the rumpled sheets – shirtless and pretty and toned… However, the grumpy-ass expression on his face somewhat ruins the effect.

"Like when you're asleep and I don't have to endure your grousing," says Ino. "Then I'm happy."

As expected, his eyes immediately flash violet offense at her. Ino turns away to hide her smirk but he catches it in the mirror. The offense dissipates and settles into something closer to impishness.

"So… you creep on me when I'm sleeping," says Hidan.

"Pff. Not in the way you're thinking," says Ino. "You wake me up with your snoring constantly… so then I just lie there and fantasize about suffocating you."

"Fuck you, I don't _snore_ ," says Hidan.

Ino untangles her damp hair. "Oh my god, _yes_ you do."

"Whatever," says Hidan, gesturing dismissively. "That's not even the interesting part of your story."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," says Hidan. "The part where you fantasize about me, _that's_ interesting."

"Ew, no I don't," says Ino. (This is a small lie. Kind of. She just thinks about him, sometimes, in very general terms, because he's so pretty and all…)

"You just said you do, angel-slut," says Hidan. "Tell me more about this suffocating thing. It sounds kinda hot."

Ino combs out her hair and gives him a look over her shoulder. He contemplates her with a lazy kind of flirtatiousness, which compels her to respond in kind, if only to remind him that she's way better than he is at flirting.

"Well…" says Ino with a seductive half-smile. "Sometimes I'm lying awake, and… I feel so alone, you know?"

Hidan wiggles his eyebrows at her. Ino fights to not burst into laughter.

"And you're there – so close to me, but…"

"But what?" asks Hidan when she trails off.

Ino bites her lip slowly. "But I can't – do the things I want to. So then I imagine what it would be like to lean over you and feel your breathing…"

"Yeah?" says Hidan when she trails off again. "This is getting good. Continue."

"And then I imagine that I…"

Ino feigns hesitation and shyness and looks at the floor.

"That you what? Fuck, stop interrupting yourself."

"I imagine that I…" Ino takes a deep breath, as though to steel herself enough to make a naughty revelation. "…Stuff a pillow into your face and hold it down until you spasm out your death-twitches, then I drag your corpse out and put it through farmer-boy's combine, and you become fertilizer for next season's corn. The end."

Hidan does _not_ look impressed. "What–?! You little–"

Ino holds up a finger. "Actually, no, not corn. How do acorns grow? If you became fertilizer for _those_ , it would be, like, irony or something…"

She promptly drowns out Hidan's virulent response with the hairdryer.

VVV

It takes Ino a good twenty minutes to dry her hair, because she has a lot of it, and plus, she's doing some fancy styling with a round brush, just because it will take longer and therefore aggravate Hidan further.

When she's done, her hair falls in thick, wavy strands all the way down her back, like a mermaid's, or a nymph's, or an angel's, maybe.

"Hey, beautiful," says Hidan when the dryer is finally switched off and he can get a word in edgewise.

This is not the first thing that Ino expected to hear from Hidan after her latest stunt. She was expecting something of the –bitch or –slut variety. She looks up at Hidan questioningly.

"I need you to come here," says Hidan.

"Why?"

"Just come here."

Ino studies him, but he doesn't appear to be plotting anything too nefarious, lying there like the lazy sexy asshole that he is.

She approaches the bed cautiously.

"Closer," says Hidan, watching her with a sly glint of amusement in his half-lidded eyes.

Ino creeps closer, suspicious now.

"Sit. I'm not gonna bite you, goddamn," says Hidan.

"You've tried to before," points out Ino, quite rightly. She makes sure that her towel is well-secured before she seats herself on the bed next to him. "What is it? I have to get dressed."

"Gimme your hand," says Hidan. "I need to show you something."

Ino has a hunch as to where he might be going with this, but then again, no, he's a priest of Jashin, not a fourteen year old boy, he wouldn't…

Yeah, he would.

" _Hidan!_ " says Ino when he pulls her hand to the hard-on that he was hiding in his pants.

He laughs uproariously at her surprise. Ino shakes her head at him.

" _Really_ ," says Ino.

"So acorn? Or more like, zucchini or some other vegetable shit…"

"Idiot," says Ino instead of answering. (It is definitely more like zucchini or some shit, but Ino has known this since she first saw his interesting bits, so she is able to look disinterested.)

He laughs some more. It's kind of contagious. Ino's disapproval turns to amusement.

"I'm going to have to tell Jashin about this outrageous behaviour."

"Go ahead," says Hidan, readjusting his pants quite shamelessly. "Either you're above the normal rules, or he has a fuckin' blind spot where you're concerned."

"I'm his angel," says Ino haughtily as she makes for the closet.

"It's kind of unfair, actually," says Hidan as Ino flicks through her dresses. "…Where are you going, anyway?"

"Dinner," says Ino. "And you aren't invited."

"I know," says Hidan. "I'm never invited."

For whatever dumb reason, the way he says this makes Ino feel sad. But she has good reasons to exclude crazy-priest from her social circle, such as the fact that he would gladly kill off most of them.

"It's just a dinner with my cousin. You'd die of boredom."

"Oh, it's with your cousin," says Hidan, looking immediately more cheerful. "Thought it was Farmjizz."

"He's going to be there too," says Ino. "Kiku asked me to invite him…"

"Oh," says Hidan, and his sudden cheerfulness veers to grumpiness. "Great. So you're ditching me to hang out with that dork again."

"Yep," says Ino. She holds out two dresses. "White or black?"

"Black," says Hidan without hesitation. "The colour of _betrayal_."

Ino rolls her eyes. "Drama queen."

"Ditcher."

"Whatever," says Ino, draping the black dress onto the bed and grabbing some panties from a drawer. "Close your eyes, because I'm about to get naked."

Hidan covers his face with his hand, leaving generous gaps between his fingers.

"Peeking is a sin," says Ino, biting back a smile because he's being stupidly obvious about it.

"I'm not _peeking_ ," says Hidan. "My eyes are closed."

"Whatever," says Ino with a shrug. "It's your soul's everlasting salvation that's at stake, not mine."

She lets the towel drop and slips on her panties and bra. Hidan says nothing, though his jaw clenches in a very interesting way.

"Done," says Ino a moment later.

Hidan lets his hand fall and Ino thinks that he couldn't have been watching her after all, because she would've felt his gaze how she's feeling it now, like a touch…

She slips into the dress under his watchful eyes. She is quite resplendent in black; the contrast makes her bright.

"Zip me up?" asks Ino, backing towards the bed.

She doesn't hear him move behind her to help, so she looks over her shoulder to find that Hidan is eyeing her bare back appreciatively.

"Nah," says Hidan. "I think it looks better like that."

Ino rolls her eyes. "Great. I'll tell them it's a fashion statement."

"You do that."

Ino sits herself on the edge of the bed with her back to him. "Get up and help me, you lazy bastard."

Hidan shifts to a seated position beside Ino with a sigh, like she is being _so_ demanding. Then, instead of zipping her up, he draws a finger lightly from the small of her back to her neck. (And gives her some quickly-suppressed shivers as he does so.)

"There," he says.

"Gee, _thanks_ , Hidan," says Ino, feigning imbecility.

"Anytime," says Hidan.

"If I go like this, farmer-boy gets to see more of me," says Ino.

"So?" says Hidan, from somewhere just above her shoulder, so she can feel his breath on her skin. "He already gets to see _all_ of you. And touch you. And every-fucking-thing else."

Ino turns to look at him and is surprised to find his face very close to hers.

"Why are you so _bitter_ about him…?" she asks, searching his eyes.

"I'm not bitter," says Hidan. He reaches his arm behind her and sullenly pulls up her zipper, as though this would somehow prove it.

"Then why do you resent him so much?"

This close to Hidan, Ino can see that his gaze has turned to a moody purple. "He doesn't deserve you."

"So you're jealous," says Ino as she rises to her feet and adjusts the straps on her dress.

Hidan rises as well, too annoyed, apparently, to keep lounging carelessly.

"He's a fuckin' random guy," says Hidan. "Why does he get to have you? What did he do so goddamn right in his life? What god does _he_ worship?"

"What does it matter?" asks Ino, slightly exasperated. "You can't have me anyway. Because of the god _you_ worship."

There's nothing untrue in these words and Ino certainly did not say them with the intent to injure. But Hidan looks at her, then, unguarded for a moment, and she sees that he is hurting. His eyes are filled with a kind of distressed uncertainty and confusion that almost pains Ino to see, which must therefore be close to unbearable for him…

Ino is not really an empathetic person, but occasionally, she has these moments – moments like this, when she doesn't need to activate her technique to feel the currents of confusion and hurt that are making him ache right now.

And – unusually – she regrets her words. And – also unusually – she actually, truly, feels for him.

So she surprises the hell out of them both when she reaches her slim arms around Hidan's neck and pulls him into an impulsive hug.

He is shocked into immobility for the first few seconds – _long_ seconds, to Ino, who wonders if this was a mistake – but then he slips his arms around her waist and pulls her in towards him, and rests his cheek on her shoulder, and she knows that it wasn't.

His skin is warm under her bare arms and his breath even more so where it brushes along her shoulder. He feels good to her, and she knows that she feels good to him, because they're both in the prime of their lives, and beautiful, and strong. The flat of her tummy is flush against his, her breasts press into his chest, he is all lean hard muscle and she is all toned curves, and their heights line up just so, and they fit gorgeously together, a heart in a reliquary, an idol in a shrine…

She knows that he can smell her shampoo and her soap warmed by her skin, which is probably why he nuzzles his face into the side of her neck – unless he just wants an excuse to pull her in closer to him, which he does anyway, and she doesn't begrudge him this, because it feels quite wonderful, this togetherness – it feels right.

They hold each other in this tight embrace for a long time, the angel-girl and the priest-boy, and many unsaid things pass between them; his longing for her and her acknowledgement of it, her daydreams about him and his prayers about her, a shared understanding that, in a different world, in a different set of circumstances, they might have been something more than the worshipper and the worshipped…

Hidan leans his forehead against Ino's and looks down at her, his gaze heavy with devotion and want and worry.

"Wonder-girl," he says, "what are you doing to me?"

And Ino's heart thrills a little, though she doesn't know why.

"I could ask you the same question, priest-boy."

He huffs out something amused and stares at her mouth and then finds her eyes, and his are full of a yearning and confusion that makes his face even more beautiful, and Ino kind of wants to melt.

Hidan's hand slides up her back to the nape of her neck and then Ino's fingertips find their place on his shoulders. Their breaths mingle and they are so lost right now, together, in each other more deeply now than during any of Ino's mind games, because in this moment it's not their spirits or wills that are touching, it's their souls.

And Ino finds herself wanting to push herself to her tip-toes and kiss him hard, except there are a thousand reasons why she shouldn't; his religion, and farmer-boy, and she's leaving in a week, and he's crazy, and Jashin, and and and…

Ino swallows hard and turns away. Hidan stares at her profile for a while, then he rests his cheek on her shoulder again, sighing out a long breath of mingled disappointment and relief, and maybe brushing his lips with almost imperceptible lightness against her skin, too, Ino can't be sure.

"…I need to finish getting ready," says Ino.

"You do that," says Hidan, letting go of her, which leaves her feeling oddly bereft. "I need to pray."

VVV

It is late when Ino returns from her dinner. When she opens the bedroom door, she sees that Hidan is already asleep, looking devastatingly innocent, curled up on his side with a pillow in his arms and an unusually serene expression on his face.

As she slips out of her clothes – with movements that are not _quite_ as graceful as usual; she has had a few glasses of wine – Ino reflects that, if he'd only keep his foul mouth shut sometimes, and temper the crazy heat in his eyes, he could pass for an angel just as well as she does.

She washes up and brushes her teeth as quietly as she can, then she climbs into bed next to him.

Her side of the bed is cold. Ino shivers once or twice, then asks herself, with the kind of deep philosophy borne by wine, why she should be the only one to suffer here. How is that fair?

She edges a leg towards Hidan's side, which is, as she suspected, toasty-warm. Ino cackles evilly to herself before rolling to his side and sticking her icy feet into the warmest possible places.

"Motherf–" says Hidan, jerking awake. He looks around in a daze and sees Ino giggling next to him in the penumbra of the bedroom.

"Why are you so fuckin' _frigid_?" he says, scooting away from her.

"Because it's cold in here," says Ino. "Hey. Stay close. Warm me up, you jerk."

" _No._ Get away, you're like _ice_..."

"Fine," says Ino, settling into the space that Hidan recently vacated. "I'll just take your warm spot."

He stares disbelievingly at her from the edge of the bed, half-asleep still, but definitely more than half-annoyed. Ino nestles into his pillow with the self-satisfaction of a cat and stares back, daring him to do something about it.

"I'll just make a _better_ warm spot," says Hidan. "So fuck you."

"Fine," says Ino. "Now shut up. I'm sleeping."

" _You're_ sleeping? You're the one who woke me–"

"Shh."

Hidan mutters something rude and leans over Ino to steal her pillow, since she has his. This puts him momentarily in a very vulnerable position, hovering above her with his arm outstretched and his bare ribs just inches from her fingertips…

For whatever slightly-tipsy reason, Ino really feels like tickling him.

So she does.

He is _very_ ticklish, and, to Ino's delight, he _giggles_ , which is hilarious because he has this whole hardass judgement-serving killer-priest thing going on.

"Stop," says Hidan, or maybe it's closer to a breathless shriek.

"Oh my god," says Ino, tickling him ruthlessly, " _listen_ to you."

Hidan says something that is probably supposed to be a stream of hair-raising swearing, but it comes out as disconnected syllables interspersed with squeals.

Eventually, he manages to get grip on each of Ino's hands and press them into the mattress above her head.

"What," says Hidan, fighting for breath, "is fucking wrong with you?"

"That was _hilarious_ ," says Ino, laughing. "You giggle like a little boy, it was so cute…"

"It wasn't _cute_ ," says Hidan. "It was fuckin' _torture_."

"Torture?" repeats Ino. "Well then. Praise Jashin and let me continue until you die."

He looks down at her, uncertain as to whether this is sincere or teasing, and Ino looks up at him, and smirks, and confirms that it's the latter.

To head off his preaching, Ino decides to distract him by running her bare leg down his. It works _exceedingly_ well; he looks down at her and notices that she's only in her underwear and rolls off of her immediately.

"Don't," he says, moving to the side of the bed formerly known as Ino's.

"Don't what?" asks Ino innocently, throwing a leg over his hip now that he's beside her.

"You _know_ what," says Hidan, sliding his hand down her leg and gripping it at the ankle to remove it from his vicinity.

"No I don't," says Ino, throwing her other leg across him.

"Angel-girl."

"What?"

"You gotta stop making this so hard for me."

"Mm," says Ino. "Word choice."

"What?... Oh. Fuck."

"You'll have to ask more nicely than that," says Ino. "And besides, I'm seeing someone."

Hidan pushes her leg away and doesn't answer, opting instead to stare at the ceiling. Ino can see that he is not enjoying their repartee any more, and that she, perhaps, pushed it too far. Slightly contrite, she pulls her various limbs back towards herself.

"Sorry," says Ino. "Wine always makes me want to climb all over m- um, people… and I had a little too much tonight."

She presses her fingers to his mouth before he can lecture her on the sins of alcohol. "No. I needed it to get through that dinner. Trust me."

Hidan brings up a hand to nudge her hushing fingertips away from his mouth. "That bad, huh?"

Ino notices that he keeps her hand nestled under his on his chest – and she also notices that he tries to look casual about it, so she chooses not to make a remark.

"Pretty bad," says Ino. "It started out fine, and then Sonkei started talking about how amazing it would be if I stayed here longer… and I think Kiku was in on it too, because she was all 'oh yes, I could use your help, do you have to go so soon' – which is even more annoying, because she knows more than anyone that I can't…"

Ino sighs. "Anyway. It wasn't fun after that, when I understood that they had an agenda and they were kind of ganging up on me. I just played dumb and bubbly and said how much I missed home... god, farmer-boy, why do you have to be so _in love_ , just, _why_..."

Instead of agreeing with her and going on a tirade about 'Farmjizz,' Hidan surprises her by shrugging. "Can't really fuckin' blame the guy for that."

"How so?" asks Ino, nonplussed at this unexpected defense of Sonkei.

Hidan stares at the ceiling in a pained kind of way.

"It's... hard not to love you, angel-girl," he says eventually.

Ino studies him in the dark. "I _really_ hope you're not speaking from experience."

There is a beat of silence.

"No," says Hidan.

"Good. Don't."

He is still holding her hand to his chest, and Ino has a moment of doubt, because under her fingertips, she definitely felt his pulse accelerate. She doesn't push the issue, however; things are complicated enough as is.

They lie in silence for a while, and, eventually, Ino drifts off to that half-awareness between sleep and waking.

Then Hidan whispers in the dark.

"I saw you in my prayers again."

And Ino, not sure how to answer this, squeezes his hand and says nothing.

VVV


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's note:** I intended to upload this whole story in only two parts, all wham bam thank you ma'am, because I've been such a dick author over the years with my unfinished fics and I'm trying to be nice.

However, I'm still refining the ending of SOUL, so… maybe three parts. Still better than my previous track record.

So, let us continue with the crack and the fluff. So much fluff, writing this story is like taking a Prozac or something. It's good times.

VVV

 **Chapter 11**

 _Let us be silent, that we may hear  
The whispers of the gods  
_\- Emerson

It is the last day of August and Ino only has a handful of nights left in Kurashiki.

It's been a hot, sticky sort of day. She stands in front of the big bay windows and twists her hair into a braid: the smooth white-gold locks that tumbled down her shoulders this morning have rebelled into curling unruly tendrils this evening.

Ino surveys the panorama before her pensively as she braids. The countdown is on now – soon this view of the quaint hamlet, with its little shops and homes and bridge and small clock-tower, will be nothing but a memory.

Her eyes travel from one familiar sight to the next until the clock-tower holds her attention. First she thinks it is because of the unexpected lateness of the hour – _how_ is it already six-thirty? – but then she realizes that no, that's not it. The tower's silhouette is a little off. It only has one spire, but right now, unless she's very much mistaken, there are two...

Ino approaches the window and shades her eyes against the slanting afternoon sun.

It's not a second spire that the clock-tower has spontaneously sprouted – there's a figure standing beside the spire, at the very top of the tower. And there's something very familiar about the figure.

From this distance, she can just make out the movement of a shirt flagging in the breeze, which confirms her suspicion.

It's Hidan.

"What are you up to, priest-boy?" mutters Ino to herself as she watches his distant figure silhouetted against the brilliantly blue late afternoon sky.

Curiosity gets her. She ties off the end of her braid (a turquoise ribbon; it matches her eyes) and makes for the door.

VVV

Ino finds the main square deserted: all of the good citizens of Kurashiki are indoors at this hour, eating supper. She makes her way to the base of the clock-tower and tries the door, because she would like to use the stairs to get up there, like a civilized person – but alas, the door is dead-bolted shut.

So, if Ino wishes to join Hidan up there, which she does, she has to be a fearless kunoichi, not a delicate flower-girl, and climb. She steps away from the door and studies the tower's stony wall until she sees the scuff marks here and there that tell the story of Hidan's trajectory to the top – relatively well-worn scuff marks, actually, which suggest that Hidan has made the journey up more than a handful of times.

She sees Hidan's head poke over the edge of the small platform at the very top of the tower: he notices her and watches her careful progress as she climbs up to join him.

So… maybe Ino has to be a _mostly_ fearless kunoichi, because she might be a _little_ afraid of heights, and she realizes, as she makes her way up, that the small clock-tower – perhaps four or five stories high – feels quite a bit higher than it looks when you are scaling the wall wearing your cute turquoise wedges that are, incidentally, absolute crap at gripping, while your cute white dress billows uselessly around you...

As she digs her fingers into the stones (and probably ruins her nails), Ino reflects that this was, perhaps, not her smartest move of the day. But, no matter, she must finish what she started, because she is way too proud to turn back now that Hidan is watching. So suck it up and climb, buttercup, and for fuck's sake don't look down…

As Ino nears the tiny platform at the top of the tower, Hidan reaches a hand down to grip her wrist and pull her up. Ino clambers to her feet and then she clings to Hidan fiercely for a long moment. He looks down at her with an eyebrow raised and hands that aren't too sure where to put themselves.

"Hi," says Ino into Hidan's chest.

"Hey," says Hidan to the top of Ino's head.

It will not do to continue to cling to him, or he will begin to suspect. Ino clenches her teeth and transfers her fierce affections from Hidan to the sun-warmed metal of the clock-tower's spire, which she grips just as intensely.

"This is… a little higher than it looked from down there," says Ino as she catches her breath and looks anywhere but down.

"Really?" says Hidan, standing carelessly on the edge of the platform and looking over. "It's not _that_ high…"

Watching him lean over the edge like that, with no railing or safeties, makes Ino want to puke.

"I guess," says Ino in a slightly strangled voice.

Hidan is watching her oddly cramped actions with some curiosity, so Ino bravely tries to loosen her death-grip on the spire. She settles on sliding down to her butt onto the platform and hooking one arm around the spire, casually, like it's just to be comfortable and not like she wants to cling onto it for dear life.

Hidan sits next to her, leaning against the spire, dangling a foot over the void. He glances at her and takes in her slightly clenched jaw.

"You scared of heights?"

"No," lies Ino.

"You sure fuckin' _look_ like you're scared of heights," says Hidan.

"Nope."

"Whatever, vertigo-tits."

"Shut _up_ ," says Ino, releasing her white-knuckled grip on the spire with far more bravado than she feels.

Hidan huffs out his amusement and dangles a second foot over the ledge just to show her how unafraid he is, the jerk.

Ino looks at him defiantly, sits up straighter and allows her foot to dangle next to his. (Really, though, she would like to curl into the fetal position around the spire and maybe die there.)

"So," says Ino as conversationally as she can, because this was the whole point of climbing this thing and scaring herself shitless – "what are you doing up here?"

"Praying," says Hidan with a shrug. "Thinking. Shit like that."

"Oh," says Ino. "That's… really not that interesting."

(And really not worth the trip up and subsequent trauma.)

Hidan quirks an eyebrow at her. "…What did you think I was up to?"

"I don't know," says Ino. "Maybe you were going to impale someone to death on the spire, or something, I know you like pikes…"

"That's a bright fucking idea," says Hidan, turning around and eyeing the sharp point about six feet above their heads.

" _Hidan_."

"It was _your_ damn idea!"

"Don't."

Hidan settles back against the spire with some grumpy mutterings.

"You must come up here a lot," says Ino to distract him. "You've basically made a path up the wall…"

"Yeah," says Hidan.

"Why?"

Hidan looks skywards. "It feels like a spiritual place, or some shit. Close to Jashin."

"You think Jashin is up there?" asks Ino, gesturing to the sky with her free hand. (Because she certainly doesn't think so. If Jashin is anywhere, in Ino's opinion, he is in some burning chasm down below…)

"Maybe," says Hidan. "I don't know."

"Oh," says Ino. "Should've read the scriptures?"

"Should've read the scriptures," repeats Hidan. "But they looked so _boring_ … like at least put in some pictures of dead people, you know?"

"Totally," deadpans Ino.

"You always get me, angel," says Hidan, looking at her with violet fondness.

"Where are the scriptures now?" asks Ino.

"Dunno," says Hidan.

"But – don't you want to read them one day…?"

Hidan shrugs. "Jashin tells me what I need to know – and he sent me you. And you're way better than some dusty-ass books."

"I guess," says Ino noncommittally. "Hey, are we even allowed to be up here?"

"Allowed?" repeats Hidan, like the concept of _allowed_ is foreign to him.

"Well, you know," says Ino. "Sometimes there are rules, it's kind of a thing…"

"Dunno," says Hidan with a shrug. "Who cares. I only follow Jashin's rules."

Ino would like to point out that he actually doesn't quite follow Jashin's rules, but she's still a touch too nervous to be sassy at this point. However, now that she's solidly anchored to something, she is able to look around with some interest. It _is_ a gorgeous view; Kurashiki looks even more like a little toy town from up here than from her apartment.

"There's my place!" says Ino, pointing to the windows above the distant flower shop.

"I know," says Hidan, in a way that suggests, somehow, that he is very familiar with looking in that particular direction.

"I didn't realize my bathroom window was so… visible, from up here," says Ino after a while, narrowing her eyes at it.

"Yeah," says Hidan. "And you never shut the blinds."

Ino stares at him blankly as she processes this sentence.

"Just sayin'," says Hidan with a smirk.

Ino smacks his shoulder. "Perv."

"Can I, like, be reborn as your loofah?"

" _Hidan_."

He snickers to himself and then his grin disappears, because he sees where Ino's gaze has drifted. He turns sullen.

"Yeah, that's Farmjizz's Jizz Farm," says Hidan.

Ino's eyes rove over the beautiful rolling fields and the tangled rows of fruit trees that make up Sonkei's orchards, all of which look unfamiliar from this height and distance.

"He's got a lot of land," says Hidan. "And a big-ass house."

"He does," says Ino.

"I don't," says Hidan.

Ino hesitates a moment before responding, because she is not sure what his point is. "…No, you don't."

"I don't have anything, really," says Hidan.

Ino turns to him and sees that he is staring fixedly at Sonkei's fields. His expression is unreadable but his words are heavy with something like unhappiness; altogether strange sentiments from an uncompromising priest-boy.

Ino nudges him with her shoulder and says quietly, "you have Jashin."

"I have Jashin," repeats Hidan.

There is a moment of silence. Hidan looks like he wants to say something else and Ino thinks that she knows what he wants to say, only he shouldn't say it…

"And I have you," says Hidan.

Ino shakes her head. "Hidan–"

"Jashin gave you to me. I have you more than Fucklenuts over there ever will."

Ino turns away and doesn't confirm or deny, which is, to Hidan, far more encouraging than outright rejection; he takes her hand and presses it to his chest. Ino lets him hold it for a short while before gently disengaging from his grasp under the pretext of retying the ribbon at the end of her braid.

A door slams somewhere in the village. Hidan clambers to his feet to look down and see who it is. The way he leans forward so makes Ino shudder.

"Can you not?" asks Ino.

"Not what?"

"Lean over like that."

"Why?"

"Because you'll fall."

Hidan looks over his shoulder at her like she's being weird. "So I fall, so what? I won't die like some heathen fuck."

"I don't want to scrape your brain goop off the ground," says Ino. "I'm not sure I can fix that."

"Nah," says Hidan with a careless shrug. "Jashin would guide you."

"You're being reckless."

"Stop worrying."

" _Please_ , Hidan."

He sees that she is being serious and sighs and sits back down next to her.

"So _paranoid_ ," says Hidan.

"I'm sorry I _care_ ," says Ino with a bit of piss.

Hidan looks straight ahead for a surprised second, then he turns to her.

"You care?"

"… Yes," says Ino, racing to turn those words into something that won't make him think she cares about him, because she doesn't, mostly, or whatever – "I care about what people would think. The villagers would be shocked."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I thought you cared about _me_ for a second," says Hidan.

"…No."

"It was a great second," says Hidan sadly.

"Cherish the memory," says Ino.

Hidan looks forlorn, which makes Ino feel like a jerk. Which, normally, she wouldn't care about, but for some reason…

She sighs and looks at the sky. "Okay. Maybe I care about you a little."

Hidan brightens immediately and does a fist pump. " _Yes._ Angel-girl _cares_."

"A _little_ , I said," says Ino.

"She _cares_ ," says Hidan with another fist pump, and Ino laughs because he's such an idiot.

VVV

The conversation on the clock-tower drifts to and fro from consequential to inconsequential things; gods and what's for dinner and fate and Ino's nails and pool-boys and loofahs and heaven and hell. Ino and Hidan laugh at each other a few times and offend each other many more times, but, somehow, it's okay, because his insults are kind of terms of endearment and her glares soften more quickly than before...

Twice the clock-tower below them rings out the hour. The music of the bells resonates through Ino's whole body like she's a bell herself (a novel experience; Hidan says it kind of feels like Jashin's voice, only more punctual). Each passing hour surprises them anew, because it feels like they've only been here for ten minutes, talking of nothing and everything.

At one point, Ino leans into Hidan, because otherwise the spire digs into her back, and Hidan says his arm is falling asleep because of her deadweight so he puts it around her shoulders, casually, because obviously, it's more comfortable for both of them this way, and there's not much room to do otherwise, here at the top of the clock-tower, which, right now, kind of feels like the top of the world…

In the square below them, people emerge from their homes with bellies full of supper and wander about in their slow country way, unaware of Hidan and Ino watching them from above and making bets on who is going where. Old men fill up the benches in the square and light their pipes and talk about old man things (the weather and gambling according to Ino; babes according to Hidan) and the day dies around them, slow and crimson, as the sun sinks low at the end of the valley.

Ino and Hidan, seated as they are at the highest point in the village, are the last things in the valley to be touched by this sun whose light suffuses everything with red. The fairness of their hair is thirsty for this blood-tinge, as is the paleness of their skin. Ino feels like there's a whiff of Jashin about it, there is a meaning to it, but when she asks herself what that meaning is, she is uncertain.

Hidan says nothing, though he studies her long in the red light, as though she is herself an answer to some unvoiced question of his. His arm tightens around her briefly and she glances up at him and he turns away, looking for all the world like a boy who wants to say something but can't quite gather up the nerve. He's stupidly cute to Ino, this nervous Hidan, because Hidan is never tongue-tied and shy, so she leans in and gives him a tiny peck on the cheek as a reward. Of course, he doesn't know what the reward is for and just looks bemused and kind of like he's biting back a pleased grin, and, as she puts her head back on his shoulder, Ino thinks that he might be blushing a little, or it might just be the light…

The sun disappears and leaves the western sky aglow with striations of red. In the square below, the village folk wander back indoors and the old men on the benches suck up the last of their pipes and hobble to their beds to dream about the weather and gambling and babes.

The clock tower rings out a third hour and Ino and Hidan sit up from their slouches and realize that their butts are numb from sitting here for so long and, more importantly, that they're starving.

They descend the clock tower in the semi-darkness. Hidan insists on going down first, so that he can catch Ino if she falls, he says, though Ino points out that she's wearing a dress so she should go first and he just smirks, so maybe that has something to do with it too.

He's obviously made the climb down many times before; he gets to the ground far before she does and stands back a little and watches her careful descent. Halfway down, Ino kicks off her impractical (but so cute) turquoise wedges and continues barefoot, a little faster, and when she's almost at the bottom, Hidan lifts her off the wall and carries her to a nearby bench, which is completely unnecessary, but a great excuse to hold her in his arms. He says it's so she doesn't get her feet dirty, and she laughs and says, thank you, you're my hero.

Then he deposits her onto the bench after holding her just a moment too long and he stares at her and forgets to bring her shoes. Ino says nothing because he's looking at her with such adoration, like she's a divine icon in some sanctuary he just discovered, here in this dusty plaza at the foot of the clock-tower as the sky behind her glows red by the will of his god…

It's too much; Ino does not want this kind of devotion and – whatever else is going on behind that gaze. She looks away and twirls her braid and breaks the silence by asking if he wants stir-fry for dinner, because she thinks she has all the stuff…

Hidan snaps out of it and says, fuck yes let's go, and grabs her hand and sets off for the flower shop at a rapid pace, and Ino is pulled along behind him and just has time to reach down and snatch up her shoes in passing as they run back home.

VVV


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

 _And thus the heart will break,  
Yet brokenly live on.  
_\- Byron

It is the third day of September and Ino's stay in Kurashiki has almost drawn to its close. Two more sleeps and she departs for Konoha.

She makes her goodbyes to the good citizens of the village who have grown very fond of the flower-girl as lovely as her wares and ply her with gifts of food and drink far beyond what she could possibly carry home. She leaves most of it with Kiku.

That night, Ino visits Sonkei for the last time and leaves him with a broken heart. It is not the first time that she's done that to a man, nor will it be the last, but it nevertheless hurts her to hurt him. He pleads – he begs – he weeps, in that horrible painful way that men who never cry, cry, and Ino holds him and tells him as gently as she can, it was just a summer thing, you knew this all along...

She sees his brokenness in his eyes when she gives him farewell kisses tangled with apologies and the polite well-wishes of a soon-to-be stranger.

It is with difficulty that she extricates herself from Sonkei's arms and makes her way down the steps of his front porch. His expression as she walks away is so pained it is as though she is tearing away a physical part of him. She has seen that expression before, that silent agony. But what can she do? She warned him, she warned him so many times, it was just a goddamn summer thing…

She turns around to give Sonkei a slow final wave and with it, a last memory of this beautiful girl that he loves, her dress the colour of the sky, her white-gold hair dancing in the breeze like the wheat fields that surround her…

Night falls as Ino disappears down the dark country lane that leads back to the village, hoping that Sonkei will be able to forgive her one day. To make herself feel better, she tells herself that, someday soon, some cute village girl will catch his eye and he will heal and move on with his life. Because he deserves someone sweet, and kind, and _loving_.

Someone not like Ino.

Only one tear manages to escape her self-command; she wipes it away hurriedly as she makes her way down the lane.

"So…" comes a voice that Ino knows only too well.

"Really?" says Ino, not even looking up at him. "You're stalking me now?"

"I _happened_ to be walking this way," says Hidan, falling into stride next to her. His loose shirt billows open in the early fall breeze and Ino feels cold just looking at him.

"Of course you were," says Ino.

Hidan notices her over-bright eyes and his countenance switches immediately to righteous anger. "What?! Who made you cry? I'll fuck them up!"

"It's nothing," says Ino.

"Was it _him_?" says Hidan, doing a swift about-face towards the distant farm. "I'll kill him."

And Ino knows, one word from her, and he would. But that would be a profound injustice; he'd be punishing the casualty, not the perpetrator. Though perhaps, right now, the casualty would welcome it…

Ino looks away from the farmhouse guiltily. "I just ended it between me and farmer-boy. I'm leaving in a few days and didn't want it hanging over me."

"Oh," says Hidan.

Ino sniffs and looks away, embarrassed at her moment of weakness in front of this guy, who doesn't even shed a tear when he is reduced to being a talking head for months on end.

They walk along in silence. The night sky is cloudless and moonless, a deep blue-black bisected by the gauzy shimmer of the milky way. The lane takes them along a drainage ditch thick with reeds that rustle in the breeze. Here and there in the murky water, Ino can see them hiding shyly, late-season waterlilies lie, curled up against the night. The sight of them still makes her heartbeat race, though she cannot possibly have more to do for Jashin at this stage, now that his priest is all put together…

Still, she doesn't dare look too closely.

"So…" says Hidan.

Ino is _so_ not in the mood to talk. But at the same time, perhaps distraction in the form of Hidan might be a good thing, because the weight of her guilt – and that brokenness in Sonkei's eyes – is a heavy burden right now.

"What?" says Ino.

"You're single," says Hidan.

"Yeah…?" says Ino, really not sure where he's going with this.

"Who's your next victim? Some guy from your village?"

Oh. That's where he's going with this, the asshole.

"They aren't _victims_. I don't do it on purpose," says Ino. "They fall in love easily. I don't."

"I told you that you needed to step it up from killing flowers," says Hidan. "You remember?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm fuckin' _proud_ of you, angel-girl," says Hidan. "Leaving a trail of men with holes for hearts behind you is a hell of a step up…"

Ino shakes her head. Mostly because she doesn't want to hear him, not because he's necessarily wrong…

"Jashin's perfect angel," says Hidan, looking at her admiringly. "So beautiful, so _pitiless_ …"

"Don't be a jerk," says Ino. "I feel bad enough already."

"Hey. It was a compliment. Jashin approves, obviously. You're killing them in other ways."

"I'm not _killing_ them," says Ino, fiercely, because at least she has that going for her.

"Yeah?" says Hidan, looking back to the farmhouse, where all the lights are now out. He jerks his chin in that direction. "You think _he's_ ever going to be the same?"

Ino doesn't answer, because she knows that the answer is no.

"You killed the old Jizzface and left a shell of him behind. _Nice_."

Coming from Hidan, this is, of course, supposed to be a genuine compliment. But for Ino, it only elicits more remorse. She walks a little quicker, hoping to leave Hidan and his lazy amble behind, so that she can't hear these uncomfortable truths that he's nailing her with tonight…

"You know how it'll go, now," says Hidan, lengthening his stride easily to keep pace with her, much to her annoyance. "He'll find some country gal, and they'll get together, and she'll think he loves her, and he never really will."

"Quiet, Hidan."

"And they'll kiss and he'll think of you. And they'll fuck and he'll think of you. And they'll get married and he'll think of you. And they'll have snotty nasty babies and he'll think of you. And they'll grow old together like the sucker mortals they are, and until his last breath he'll wish it was _you_ …"

"Shut up," says Ino.

"How many others have you done that to?" asks Hidan, giving her a look that is all too knowing, because her reactions are confirming the accuracy of his observations.

Ino's eyes flash a night-blue warning at him. "I said _shut up_."

"Why? How many has it been, angel-face?"

"Drop it," says Ino, her anger flaring for real now. "Or I'm taking over your body right now and drowning it in the ditch."

"Okay, okay," says Hidan, holding up his hands. "Touchy…"

They walk on and Hidan's words linger in Ino's head, and she hates that he's probably dead-on with his predictions, snotty nasty babies and all. _How_ he manages to be so dumb one minute, but so perceptive the next, both eludes Ino completely and annoys the hell out of her.

Ahead, the village lights are visible about a mile down the lane, warm and welcoming against the blue of the cool night. The breeze picks up; fierce, playful gusts tug at Ino's dress and make the trees around them dance.

Hidan actually shuts up for a while, apparently mulling something over. His eyes find Ino's face, eventually, and his gaze is full of unusual thoughtfulness.

"Hey," he says, nudging Ino with a shoulder.

Ino ignores him in favour of fighting the wind pulling at her skirts.

"Can I tell you something?" asks Hidan.

"No."

He smirks and carries on anyway. "I learned a lot from you, angel."

"So glad I could help," says Ino with absolutely zero sincerity.

"Not all slaughter has to be literal," says Hidan. "Killing can be done more... subtly. The way you do it, it _lingers_. You start with your little deaths and then you hit them with lifelong heartbreak…"

Ino clenches her jaw and looks away.

"You're _cruel_ , angel-buns," says Hidan, wrapping an arm around Ino's shoulder and pulling her in close. "It's what I like about you."

Ino tries, moodily, to shrug him off, to get away from his annoyingly handsome face.

"I'm serious. You broadened the fuck out of my horizons," says Hidan, gesturing grandly to the skyline while his other arm is still hooked obnoxiously around her shoulders.

"Are you trying to make me feel better?" asks Ino. "Because it's really not working."

A particularly fierce gust of wind lifts her hair and Ino positions herself so that it whips Hidan across the face.

"I'm expressing _gratitude_ ," says Hidan, spitting hair out of his mouth. "I'm trying to be nice."

"You're making me feel like a terrible person."

"Objectively, you are," says Hidan. "You leave the shells of dead-hearted men behind you. Poor fuckers. What chance do they even have, against a goddamn angel…"

VVV

As they approach the village, Hidan masks himself with some basic genjutsu. To the civilians around here, he is all but undetectable.

"No-one in this shithole knows I exist. Don't need katana-boy hearing that I'm still alive," says Hidan by means of explanation, when Ino gives him a questioning look.

Ino ducks into a side-street that offers some shelter from the relentless wind. "You know… that's not a bad idea. I suppose I don't need to be seen walking home with a random guy right after I dumped farmer-boy. They'd talk."

"Again with the _random_ ," says Hidan, looking pained. "There's nothing random about us, angel-girl."

"Okay, okay," says Ino, rolling her eyes.

"It's fate. It's _destiny_."

"I get it," says Ino. "You're not random."

"Good," says Hidan. "Hey. You wanna try that noodle place?"

Ino tries not to get whiplash from his sporadic change of subject. She looks at the noodle stand in question, its lanterns all blown out and swaying in the wind. "I guess…?"

"Cool."

Something in the forced casualness of this single word makes Ino suspicious.

"Just to clarify," says Ino. "You weren't just asking me out."

"No," says Hidan quickly. "What kinda dumb fucking question…? I'm a priest."

"Right," says Ino. "And priests of Jashin don't do dating."

"Right. They're above that worldly bullshit. They do everlasting divine worshipping."

"… Yes," says Ino, making her way towards the stand. "Plus, I'm paying, since you have absolutely nothing to your name, so it would be a shit date, and you _so_ wouldn't be getting laid."

"Getting laid is for heathens," says Hidan dutifully.

Ino narrows her eyes at him. He looks perfectly disinterested.

It must be in her head.

"Right. So what do you want to eat, you shameless freeloader?"

"Special number four," says Hidan. "With extra faith on the side."

VVV

They return to Ino's apartment to find that the power is out; some tree somewhere was downed by the wind and hit a line. So Ino digs up a candle and they sit at the kitchen table and eat their takeout by the light of its glow. Hidan chews with his mouth wide open so that Ino can see the smushed bits of special number four in his molars, and she complains about it, and then he refills her wine glass for her without her asking, and she feels better.

Ino's mind is not really on her meal. She is preoccupied: some of Hidan's remarks from earlier trouble her, because, in his obnoxious way, he has touched on some truths about Ino that she has never really wanted to think about, let alone admit. It hurts her that his remarks are accurate, and beyond that, it annoys her profoundly that _he_ – this unperceptive loudmouth – is the one to have made them.

She watches Hidan pensively as he reaches over and slurps up her leftovers like the mannerless ruffian that he is. He notices her stare and pauses long enough to give her what is, she thinks, supposed to be a seductive look, except that he has noodles dangling from his mouth, so ew. Ino turns away with a grimace.

"Jeez, wonder-tits, you just can't keep your eyes off me tonight," remarks Hidan as he finishes his mouthful. He grabs one of her hands across the table and waggles his silver-white eyebrows in the most ridiculous fashion. "You lookin' for a rebound or something?"

"Hah," snorts Ino. "Maybe in your wildest dreams."

Hidan, who had been attempting to play footsie under the table like an idiot, stops to shake his head gravely. "Nah. My wildest dreams involve a lot of Jashin, and a lot of blood."

"Oh?" says Ino. "Nothing else?"

She looks innocently at him and he turns away after a brave attempt at holding her gaze. Ino decides that it's her turn to make him uncomfortable, her turn to point out his failings and ruin his night a little, like he has hers.

And yes, she knows that there is something else in his wildest dreams, because she's heard his whispered mutterings when he sleeps beside her, deep in those dreams. And some of those whispers are about Jashin, true – but some of them are about her.

"Not that I remember," says Hidan, looking around evasively and settling on stabbing a slippery slice of celery with a chopstick to give himself something to focus on.

"That's good to hear," says Ino. "Because I was thinking about some of the things you said tonight. About me."

"And you _know_ I was fuckin' right," says Hidan.

"Maybe you were. It made me wonder…" Ino looks down at where his hand still covers hers on the table after his jokey seduction attempt. "You know that trail of dead-hearted men I leave behind me?"

"Yeah," says Hidan, watching Ino's slim fingers interlace with his, "for which Jashin is gonna reward the shit out of you…"

"You asked me who my next victim was going to be."

"Yeah," says Hidan, looking up with interest.

Ino bites her lip apologetically.

"…I think it's you, priest-boy," says Ino.

His eyes meet hers, quizzical mauve, ready to be offended. "What?"

"I think it's already too late, actually," says Ino, more to herself than him. "Now that I think about it."

"Too late…?" repeats Hidan.

"Well, yeah," says Ino with a shrug. "You can't even get me out of your head when you're communing with Jashin. How many times has that happened now? Four? Five? Those are the times that you've told me, anyway…"

Hidan makes a sound of denial. Ino straightens and turns to him properly, so that he remembers what she looks like, so that he sees the stunning creature who inhabits his prayers. The candlelight loves her; its light gives brightness to her eyes and lends an ethereal warmth to her fair skin.

Hidan looks away. "That's not the same thing _at all_."

Ino smiles her prettiest smile and he can't even bear to look at her.

"You sleep and you think of me. You pray and you think of me. You have your deathgasms and you think of me. You've got it _bad_."

"Thinking of you is thinking of Jashin," says Hidan, full of self-righteous defensiveness.

"I'm not him," says Ino.

"He's the one showing me your face," says Hidan.

"Maybe," says Ino. "Maybe not, and you're in _so_ much trouble..."

He shakes his head in vigorous denial and doesn't meet her eyes.

"You told me you _loved_ me," says Ino, leaning towards him. "Like, several times…"

"In the religious sense!" says Hidan. "Like my whole fucking being belongs to Jashin!"

"A bit belongs to me, though," says Ino.

"You and Jashin are one."

Ino shrugs. "Whatever you have to say to convince yourself."

"You're _wrong_."

"I don't think I am," says Ino, caressing his fingers gently. "But what chance did you ever have, against a goddamn angel…"

The candle flares suddenly and Ino is radiant in its light. She turns to Hidan, all perfect beauty and grace – and now he has before him the celestial being that pieced him back together and made him whole again at the behest of his god.

And her hands in his are the hands that carry out Jashin's wishes in this world, and her eyes are the infinite skies, and her skin is living porcelain, and her mouth is the most inviting and kissable thing in the whole world…

Hidan stares at her wordlessly, until he remembers himself, closes his mouth, and swallows.

"…Shit."

VVV


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

 _Wine enters through the mouth,  
Love, the eyes.  
_\- W.B. Yeats

Dessert is a tub of pralines and cream ice-cream, because they are classy like that, and Ino did just go through a breakup, after all, and Hidan has just had an Uncomfortable Revelation.

Hidan is too lazy to get his own spoon and Ino refuses to share hers, so he tries to eat the ice-cream with his take-out chopsticks and swears vociferously at them when they don't cooperate, to Ino's increasingly giggly amusement, because she is on her fourth glass of wine, because it's been that kind of night.

They adjourn to the living room along with the sputtering candle. Ino opens a new bottle of wine, because, as she explains to Hidan, she deserves it; she is sad about ruining farmer-boy, he was such a sweet man. Hidan does not seem entirely convinced by this reasoning, but then, he generally disapproves of alcohol.

Ino gets closer to him on the sofa with wine-laced overconfidence and tries to explain these feelings, this guilt, that is bothering her, what is it with _men_? He doesn't seem to empathize enough, so she clambers onto him and gets in his face to better make her point and asks, why, Hidan? Why do they always fall in love? Why, when she expl– explish– explicitly tells them not to…?

Hidan does not have a satisfactory answer for her. Ino droops against him and sighs and tries to think back to the last time she had this much wine in one sitting; she had quite forgotten how silly and tipsy and touchy-feely it makes her. Then she looks down and sees that she has climbed onto Hidan like he is a priestly bicycle of some sort, and that bicycle is looking _extremely_ uncomfortable.

"You need to loosen up," says Ino in that flushed, generous way that the drunk have, thinking that they can solve all of the problems in the world with more drink. She presses her wineglass to his mouth. "Have."

"Hell no," says Hidan, extricating the glass from her grip and putting it on the side table, very far away, it seems to Ino. But then, everything seems kind of far away right now; the table, the wineglass, the bottle… everything except Hidan's face, _that_ seems very close.

Ino focuses on his face and looks at it attentively.

"You're so _pretty_ ," says Ino, petting Hidan's hair. He looks instantly huffy, which makes her giggle.

She leans in and looks deep into his eyes, as though she could find his pretty soul somewhere in the violet, if she looked hard enough.

"Woah, now, angel-slosh," says Hidan, looking away. "You've had way too much to fuckin' drink. Don't come in my head, you're gonna break something."

Ino brings her hands around the back of his neck and links her fingers together there. "I _won't_. I'm not that drunk…"

He looks unconvinced. Ino presses her forehead to his. "Not that you'd even know. Why don't you ever drink?"

"Because. I'm a goddamn priest," says Hidan. "And you shouldn't, either. It's _unbecoming_ for an angel of Jashin."

"Unbecoming," repeats Ino.

"Exactly."

Ino frowns at him. "Don't moralize, Hidan. It makes you less pretty."

She attempts to lean over and grab her wineglass. Hidan beats her to it and pushes it just out of reach, so all Ino manages to do is lean over him, smush her breasts into his face, and come back empty-handed.

"Hey," says Ino slowly, looking at the glass that is now, incomprehensibly, even further away.

"You're done," says Hidan. "I'm cutting you off."

Ino looks down at him to complain, but she notices that his pale cheeks are tinged with pink. Her curiosity piqued, she sinks back into his lap so that their faces are level.

"You're blushing, priest-boy. Why?"

"It's hot in here."

"No," corrects Ino, egotistically, but also, rightly: "I'm hot. And that's why you're blushing."

He ignores her statement, which confirms that she is correct more than anything he could have said.

"It's time for you to go to bed," says Hidan.

"Mm… only if you carry me," says Ino with exaggerated coyness as she twists a strand of his hair around one of her fingers.

"You've had way too much goddamn wine," says Hidan, pulling her hand free of his hair.

He sits tensely underneath her. Ino giggles and wiggles. "I know. It's _fun_. You look _so_ uncomfortable right now."

He glares at her. Ino bites her lip, tipsily amused at her own forwardness and his apprehension. "So, about this rebound thing…"

"I was just fucking around," says Hidan quickly. "It was a joke."

"Oh?" says Ino, bringing up a hand to pull down one of the straps of her dress. "Well by all means, continue to fuck around…"

He watches her pull the strap down in a kind of open-mouthed daze and then he blinks and grabs her wrists to prevent her from pulling down the other one. "Don't do this to me, angel."

"But you're here right now," says Ino.

"I'm also a priest right now," says Hidan.

"But _why_ ," whines Ino in a very Hidan-ish fashion. She collapses bonelessly against him as she whines, putting him into full contact with all manner of interesting curves and grab-able parts. She squeezes her knees on either side of his thighs and rests against him with her face nestled into his neck. He sits rigidly below her, which amuses her all the more.

"You're pretty, I'm pretty," says Ino into his neck. She smiles a private smile as she sees goosebumps rise on his skin. "Let's be pretty _together_. Naked."

"I'm good," says Hidan, swallowing visibly. "I've got my god. My ritual. I don't need anything else. Anything else is sin."

"But _Hidaan_ ," purrs Ino as she caresses the back of his neck with the tips of her slender fingers. "I'm always _in_ your ritual."

When he ignores her, Ino pushes her face into his, so that their lips are almost brushing. "Don't you want to see what it's like in person?"

He closes his eyes as her fingers tangle gently into the hair at the back of his head. He tries to turn away from her and, like he did to her some months ago, she grabs his chin and forces him towards her.

"Why aren't you looking at me, Hidan?" asks Ino.

He opens his eyes and they are an intense violet. "Because. You're _too_ beautiful. And I don't think you know what you're doing right now."

" _Too_ beautiful," repeats Ino, her lips curving into a pleased smile. "You're the sweetest asshole I know."

She pulls in closer to him and captures him in her depthless eyes, reaching ever so slightly into his head, touching her essence to his like breezy kisses. He quivers from the almost imperceptible touches, the feeling that she's in his head, but not quite…

"Tut," says Ino, drawing her fingers along his clenched jaw. "Look at how tense you are."

Her hands push away his loose shirt and pass down his tight shoulders and his contracted core. Her touch lingers on his hard stomach.

"You have such nice abs," says Ino seductively into his ear. "What's your secret?"

It's a dumb question, because Ino's toned stomach is absolute perfection, and she definitely doesn't need tips – but it gives her a reason to whisper into his ear and see the gooseflesh rise again, which is amusing and empowering all at once.

"I, uh –"

Hidan swallows as Ino's hand drifts lower. He sits stiffly below her, as though he's not enjoying her attentions or her blatant, drunken takeover of his personal space – but at the same time, Ino knows that he is fully capable of telling her to get the fuck away, of lifting her off him if he wants to, of pushing her from his lap…

But he doesn't. Why?

Ino contemplates him. "You're so conflicted right now, and it's all my fault."

"You're fuckin' right it's your fault," says Hidan, staring fiercely at the wall somewhere behind her.

"Mm," says Ino, settling herself against him more comfortably with unnecessarily provocative wiggles.

She hears his clench-jawed intake of breath, feels his over-tense muscles start to tremble slightly. And still he does not move to push her off, doesn't tell her to stop, to get away. And Ino begins to understand that he is not trying to resist her, so much as trying to resist himself, his own frailties, his own illicit wants…

"You really are just a man," says Ino. "A godly man, a fanatical man, a truly _pious_ man… but even so…"

She feels like she is seeing him clearly for the first time, because this is the first time that she's actually treated him, not as an annoying collection of pieced-together parts called Hidan that she flirts with for kicks, but as she treats _men_. This is the first time that she's given him a real sense of the power of her seductions and her allure.

"You think I don't know that? I know – fuck, I _know_ ," Hidan says in a half-whisper. His eyes are closed, his face is turned away. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because," says Ino, brushing her lips to his as she speaks. "I'm _cruel_. It's what you like about me."

He recognizes those words, recognizes their truth. His eyes fly open and find hers.

VVV


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

 _Pleasure's a sin,  
And sometimes sin's a pleasure.  
_\- Byron

They exchange breaths for a slow moment. And Ino sees that he wants her, and he adores her, and he hates her for it.

" _So_ cruel. You didn't know how right you were, did you?" whispers Ino, her mouth hovering over his, and every word is a teasing, accidental half-kiss.

"Fuck," says Hidan.

He shifts below her and Ino knows what he is trying to hide.

She smiles a merciless grin. "Jashin is not a kind god."

Hidan's deep purple gaze flicks to where she sits astride his lap, to where her dress slips off her shoulder and invites him to touch, to where her parted lips tell him to kiss. Her mention of his god's name enlivens him with a sudden assurance. He searches her eyes.

"He's given me you," says Hidan. "And that's fuckin' amazing."

"I guess that's true," concedes Ino, because it flatters her wine-soaked ego.

"Is this… wrong, if you're his angel?" asks Hidan, his gaze drifting back to her body, nestled so close to his. "Are you doing his bidding right now?"

Ino shrugs carelessly, more interested in watching the play of the candlelight in Hidan's fascinating eyes, that confused conflation of religious fervor and human frailty…

"Can you even do wrong?" asks Hidan.

He slips his hands around her waist and holds her like a prayer and Ino's heart flutters, because being worshiped like this feels beautiful.

"Is this sinning?" asks Hidan.

He looks up at her expectantly, because, to him, right now, her word is the gospel. But Ino does not have answers to these theological queries; in fact, right now, they tax her patience and confuse her. Logically, she is not an angel, so she wouldn't know, so why the hell is he even asking her? Or, wait. Had she concluded that she was, in fact, an angel? She can't remember any more…

Logically, she needs more wine.

She leans over and swipes up her wineglass faster than Hidan can block her hand, but his fingers grip the thin glass stem and pull down on it so that she cannot quite bring it up to her mouth.

Ino pulls, Hidan pulls. The wineglass gives up on existence and explodes into a dozen shards. A half-cup of Riesling drenches the front of Ino's dress and splashes across Hidan's chest.

"… _Really_ , Hidan," says Ino, looking down at the damage.

She touches at her mouth, where she distinctly felt a piece of glass nick at her lower lip. Her tongue flicks out, and yes, there it is, she tastes blood.

She returns her fierce gaze to Hidan, fully intent on smacking him for making her bleed and breaking her wineglass and wasting all of that lovely Riesling – but when she looks down, she finds that Hidan is staring at her in the way that men stare at her when she walks into the bedroom naked.

His pupils are huge, his breathing has quickened, he has gone pale – and, from where Ino is sitting, it feels like all the blood that left his face migrated to his already tight pants.

He stares, entranced, at the droplet of blood that has already welled back into existence on Ino's lip, as though his whole world has coalesced into this single red drop.

Ino brings up a hand to wipe at it, but he grips her wrist with unexpected force and pulls her hand back down.

"That one's mine," he breathes, before slipping his hand behind her neck and pulling her towards him.

He doesn't have far to go, to kiss her, because a moment ago she was ghosting kisses on him with every word. This time, though, their mouths meet for real, angel's lips against those of the true believer – and it feels like something detonates in Ino's head. This kiss is that staggering first breath of air after drowning, a blinding flash of sun between clouds, the impact of a blade unexpected.

She feels his tongue flick against her lower lip, licking off that drop of blood, then he presses their mouths together harder and swears something unintelligible. Ino digs her fingers into his shoulders to keep her head from spinning because fuck, she did not expect this to be so intense.

They part and he pulls back just enough that his wonder-filled eyes meet hers and she can see that he is reeling from it too.

"Holy shit," says Hidan breathlessly, looking at her with a mixture of shock, devotion and disbelief. "That was…fuck, who even stands a chance against you…"

Ino fights to regulate her own breathing and shakes her head, wanting to inform him that, actually, it's never like that, normally…

He stares at her. "That was like, approaching deathgasm territory, seriously…"

Ino opens her mouth to respond, but instead of words, a shriek emerges, because Hidan's body and face have suddenly turned pitch black, except for some white lines vaguely reminiscent of bones crisscrossing his skin.

" _Ohmygod_ ," squeals Ino, leaping off of him. "What the hell?!"

The ghastly skeleton-man on the couch looks at his hands and appears mildly surprised. "Oh. Yeah. Oops."

" _Oops_?!" repeats Ino, her fingers pressed to her mouth. "What is wrong with you? You're like a – a corpse…"

"I'm Jashin's grim fuckin' reaper," says Hidan. "Duh."

"But _why_?" says Ino. "What just happened?"

"Your blood, _obviously_ ," says Hidan impatiently, as though Ino is being obtuse. Then he shakes his head. "Frig. I keep forgetting, angels don't need to do this kind of shit. This normal. Consume blood, go black. Step one of the ritual, actually."

"Step one…?"

Since Hidan does not appear to be ready to grimly reap her, Ino approaches the sofa again and sits back down next to him, though quite a bit further away than she was previously.

"Yeah," says Hidan, unsettling Ino by looking directly at her with that horrible white skull masking his features. "Step two… I'm gonna have to kill us."

"Kill us?" repeats Ino, because she can't have heard him correctly.

"Yeah."

"Um. I might have an objection to raise…" Ino trails off distractedly, because she can't stop staring at him, taking in the lines of the death's head imprinted on his face, the stylized ribs slashing his chest. In the flickering candlelight, the effect is even more grotesque.

"What?" says Hidan, noticing her look of distaste.

"It's so _creepy_ ," says Ino.

His eyes have remained the same despite his transformation and they flash annoyance at her in a familiar way. "No shit. That's kind of the idea."

That familiarity helps Ino regain her customary composure. She sniffs. "It's gross. I'm going to tell Jashin to redo the design…"

"Don't you fucking dare," says Hidan. "I _like_ it."

"But you look like a skeleton," says Ino.

"Exactly. It's badass."

"An _ugly_ skeleton."

"No," says Hidan. "It's _cool_."

"It's not even anatomically correct!" says Ino.

"It's _fine_ ," says Hidan.

"But why does the skull have a hole in its forehead?" asks Ino, reaching over to poke the area in question.

"Artistic fucking liberties," says Hidan, batting away her hand.

"Whatever. I don't like it," says Ino. "How do you get back to normal?"

"Like I said, I'm gonna have to kill us," says Hidan. "You know, this could be kind of hot…"

Ino raises an eyebrow. "Um. Like _I_ said, I might have an objection to raise."

"Angel. We won't really _die_ , obviously," says Hidan with a gentle sort of patience, as though she's being paranoid and kind of dumb. "We're Jashin's blessed."

Ino is not so sure that it's so obvious. "…I _don't_ want to be killed."

"It's not really _optional_ at this point," says Hidan. "We kind of have to. It's your blood that made me like this, it's like a contract..."

Ino stares hard at him in response to this statement, because being forced into a blood-contract with Hidan and his god was really not high on her priority list today.

"... Excuse me?!" she says, her voice increasing in volume with every word – "…not optional? Then why'd you _do_ it? Why'd you take my blood, Hidan?"

Hidan opens his mouth, pauses to think about it, and then apparently slides into a pleasant memory, wherein he remains for a long moment with an air of beatific contentment.

Ino smacks him on the arm. "Hello?! Earth to planet fucking Hidan…!"

Hidan blinks and gazes at Ino with a soft dreamy look despite the hard lines of the skull on his face. "Mm… what were we saying?"

"Oh, nothing important," says Ino caustically. "Just discussing how you took my blood, knowing what would happen, and you did it anyway, and we were trying to understand why you would do something so _stupid._ "

"It wasn't stupid," says Hidan. "It was goddamn amazing, and I will remember it till the day I die. If I ever die. It was _that_ good."

And you know, he is right, it _was_ an amazing moment, a mind-blowing moment, but there will be time to reminisce on it later. Right now, there are other things preoccupying Ino, such as unfulfilled contracts with death-gods. She glares at him. "But there were _consequences_ to think of, weren't there?"

"I'm not really a long-term planner," says Hidan with a dismissive shrug.

" _Long-term_ _?!_ " says Ino, reaching over to shake him by his jet-black shoulders. "You went all skeletal thirty seconds after your idiotic decision!"

"Calm your tits, angel-face," says Hidan. "This is _not_ that big a fuckin' deal. I'll kill us and we'll be fine again."

He places one of his hands on hers in an attempt to calm her. Ino looks down at the dead-man hand overlapping hers. Needless to say, the attempt does not work very well.

"I don't think you heard me," says Ino, whipping her hand out from under his. "I. _Don't_. Want. To. Die."

"C'mon. It won't hurt that much," says Hidan, in what is presumably supposed to be a comforting tone, except, given the subject matter and his whole grim reaper aspect, it really isn't. "I'll make it quick."

" _No_."

"What are you so fucking scared of?"

"Dying!" says Ino exasperatedly.

It's like he doesn't even hear her, or they're not talking the same language… Ino can see that the message is just not getting through his thick skull – either of his skulls, despite one having a hole in it – because, to him, she is absolutely as immortal as he is. She knows that he has good reasons to think this, and perhaps he is right to think this. However, for Ino, _perhaps_ is not a good enough reason to put her life on the line. Some divine entity is definitely messing around with her, but from there to willingly letting Hidan off her in a ritual suicide… just, no.

"You won't _die_ ," says Hidan, rolling his eyes. "Jeez, you angels are spoiled… I can't believe you've never even gone through this before. I've done it hundreds of times. You'll just have to trust me."

"No, Hidan."

"You don't trust me?"

"Not with this."

"Then what's your solution?" says Hidan, growing irritated now. "You want me to look like this forever? You're already bitching non-stop and it hasn't even been ten minutes."

Ino glares at him. "I don't know. We go back in time ten minutes and stop you from being a complete careless _moron_."

"Wow, that's a _great_ idea," says Hidan. "Thank _fuck_ we have you around to suggest these realistic alternatives."

"Okay, fine, maybe that wasn't useful," says Ino. "But – come _on_ … isn't there some other way…?"

"Another way to die? No."

There is a beat of silence. Then they look at each other.

"Actually..." says Hidan.

And Ino suspects that Hidan has just had the same idea that she just had. Which is kind of surprising, because he is an unimaginative monk with an extremely rigid and narrow world view, so maybe she truly has broadened his horizons…

"You are _not_ thinking what I think you're thinking," says Ino.

"I think I am," says Hidan. The makings of a slow smirk creep across his face, doubly creepy because of the skull thing.

"…Do you think that could work?" asks Ino.

"You're the angel, you tell me," says Hidan.

"I don't know anything about your weird ritual crap," says Ino. "I don't know what the rules are… I don't know how flexible Jashin's definition of _death_ is, in this context…"

She has a fairly solid hunch, though, because of the way that certain events have transpired in the past few months, the way that deaths big and small have been markers for Jashin's actions in the world – flower-picking and orgasms and killing chickens and killing children… and if nothing else, it could buy her some time before Hidan decides to stab them both to death…

Ino bites her lip. The question is, does she dare? Ten minutes ago, she was playing around with Hidan, turning him on to amuse herself and indulge in her own powers of attraction, because the wine made her flirty and cuddly and it was entertaining to watch him squirm and make him remember his weakness. But now…

She looks at Hidan, his familiar – and, moments ago, handsome – features masked by the colours of his god of death. Ino does not want to cuddle and tease him anymore – and the prospect of sex with the grim reaper in full regalia is kind of a mood killer.

Hidan's physical appearance aside, Ino plain doesn't like this new manifestation of Jashin's existence, of his power, of the rightness of Hidan's belief. It frightens her.

Ino looks away from him with a shudder.

She doesn't dare.

"Up to you," says Hidan. "Or we can do it the traditional way. I'll get a knife."

Well okay. Maybe she does.

VVV


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

 _From his lips  
Not words alone pleased her.  
_\- Milton

Ino stills Hidan with a hand on his shoulder and takes a moment to find some semblance of serenity. Is she really going to go through this this? For fuck's sake, why did he have to go all skeletal? It's really off-putting…

Her hand on his shoulder is so white against the blackness there that it could be one of the bone patterns on his skin.

"So…?" says Hidan, glancing down at where she is touching him.

"Um," says Ino.

A long moment passes during which Ino flutters indecisively between two equally daunting choices.

" _So_ …" repeats Hidan when the silence between them has stretched too long.

Ino closes her eyes because looking at him feels like staring into a skull. She has to swallow before she can continue and she hopes that her voice remains steady.

"I'm – I just – I'm not sure what Jashin wants," says Ino.

"Hey," says Hidan. "Me neither. But if we're wrong, he'll smite the shit out of us, and we'll have deserved it."

"You're not supposed to be the pragmatic one," says Ino. "I am."

"Yeah," says Hidan. "But you're _dithering_."

Ino dithers some more. Hidan runs his fingers along the back of her hand and up her forearm. Ino stares at the wall. His fingers make their way up her shoulder, her neck, her cheek.

He turns her face towards him and those violet eyes that she has come to know so well find hers.

"Angel-girl."

"Yes?"

His hand is warm on her cheek.

"Let's do it."

"But…"

"Show me a different way to die."

Something tightens in the air around them. The candle glows more fiercely for no reason at all. Ino is bathed in its flickering aura; it lights up her hair, her skin, it gives her an otherworldly halo. Ino takes this as approval from the powers that be.

Hidan stares at her and her sudden angelic glow, unsurprised by it, but quietly reverential.

"This is what he wants," says Ino, with sudden certainty, because she can feel it now, that same pressure, that same sense of intention and will, that has been haunting her ever since she found the stupid talking head in the swamp. And this is the last time, she tells herself, the last time that she will bend to it, because it is convenient to her right now, to align herself with Jashin, if her other option is literally being killed…

Ino shudders. "Can you feel that?"

"No," says Hidan. "But I'm not his goddamn angel."

"How can you not feel it," says Ino, trying to suppress more shivers. "It's so… heavy…"

"I don't need to. I have you," says Hidan. There is only admiration in the way he looks at her. "And I believe you."

He really, truly does. With all of his heart and whatever scraps of a soul he has left. The fire of his belief is in his eyes and it burns fiercely, and it draws her in, because she is fascinated by his faith in her.

Troubled blue meets emphatic violet and they stare at each other, the angel and the priest, and they breathe each other's breaths, and he waits for her to show him this other way to die.

She's going to do it. She _must_ do it. Ino gathers up her courage, places her slender fingers on Hidan's coal-black cheek, and kisses him lightly on his bone-white mouth. There is no hesitation, no recoil, on his part, only approval, and eagerness, now that he has his god's blessing to do this thing, this thing that has intrigued him for a long time now, in spite of himself. He doesn't let her pull away after her innocent kiss; one hand reaches around her waist and presses her against him, the other is around her neck, and he kisses her back.

The grim reaper tastes like pralines and cream. This makes Ino smile, because it reminds her that this is just that loudmouth Hidan in a stupid getup, and, really, now that she is officially unattached, she has no objection to kissing Hidan, because he is pretty, and she's thought about it more than a few times, and it does shut him up quite effectively…

He is inexperienced, but he is also enthusiastic and fervent; his kisses are as earnest as his prayers and they leave Ino – with all of her experience, and her cynicism – breathless, like it's the first time all over again. It has been years since she has found herself trembling with nerves and adrenaline and excitement because of a man, because of _kissing_ a man. Just kissing, which is the most innocent thing, and yet here she is, her head spinning, her breathing shallow… she chases the feeling, and he does too, with some half-voiced cussing thrown in, and shaky hands on her hips that pull her onto his lap.

Kiss chases kiss, tongue chases tongue, groans and breaths mingle. The other strap of Ino's dress slides off partially, and then he tugs it off properly. Ino reaches a hand behind her to undo her zipper, but he tells her to wait.

"Gotta do this properly," says Hidan, lifting Ino up and setting her on her feet.

"What…?" says Ino, swaying slightly from wine and adrenaline and kind of weak knees.

She feels Hidan behind her; his irregular breath is warm against her neck.

"I've thought about doing this so many fuckin' times," says Hidan. "You have no idea…"

He stands behind her and just stares at her, for a while, until Ino gives him a questioning look over her shoulder. Then he lifts her hair off of her back and pushes it over her shoulder, gently, and he kisses her shoulder and she feels his fingers find her zipper.

He undoes the zipper, slowly at first, in a surprising show of restraint – but that lasts about ten seconds, and then he pulls it down all the way to the bottom so quickly that Ino wants to laugh.

Ino raises her arms and the dress slides off and pools at her feet, and then she turns to Hidan, and he says, "oh god," because she's wearing lingerie that matches the colour of the blood that had welled on her lip earlier, and apparently, that really does it for him.

So he just stands there and stares at her with his mouth open, and you know, Ino has enthralled many men in her life, but she's never enthralled the grim fucking reaper, and it's kind of a power-trip, and kind of sexy, in a this-is-so-wrong, and is-this-actually-happening-right-now, kind of way.

Ino glances down at her red bra cupping her breasts, and her panties that leave only just enough to the imagination to be called panties and not a skanky thong (they _do_ look damn good on her), and then there are coal-black fingers under her chin, and she looks up, and she's kissing death, and, god help her, she's _liking_ it.

He slides a hand down her back and gives her ass a _very_ solid grope, which makes Ino squeal indignantly (and also reminds her that it's Hidan under there), and then he lifts her up and lays her on the couch and climbs on top of her. Ino pulls his shirt off him, asking, between kisses, why is he still wearing that stupid thing, and she runs her hands down his taut arms, the arms that she found and put back on him, that are now pulling her up to him fiercely, as if they could get any closer right now.

Ino digs her fingers into Hidan's shoulders and he breathes out some curse or other and makes his way down her neck with his mouth, and she arches her back and brings her breasts against him, which is apparently wildly sexy to him, because he tells her to fucking stop doing that, holy shit, or he'll bust a nut right now and that's not the point of this fuckin' exercise…

Ino laughs and she stops arching, because he told her to, but instead she lifts her hips and grinds against him, and oh my, he is _very_ ready to go, and she hears him gasp and swear and she takes a wicked pleasure in it. Then his hands find her hips and he seems torn between wanting to push her away and wanting to pull her in, and he settles on the latter with a curse and groan.

And his mouth on her neck is just heat and his hands on her are just adoration, and Ino decides that they should to move to the bedroom, like, now. They break to breathe and Ino can see that he has come to the same conclusion.

"Show me this little death, angel," breathes Hidan against her lips.

Ino smiles into his mouth. "Come with me."

She slips off of the couch and pulls him towards the dark bedroom and he stumbles behind her.

Ino is about to pull her bra off, but then she pauses and asks if he wants to do it, you know, if he's thought about doing this as many times as he's thought about undoing her zipper…

And Hidan is on her immediately, and he tells her, fuck yes I'm doing it, are you kidding me, do you know how many times I saw Farmjizz do it and I pretended it was me…

So he does it, and he pulls off her panties, too, with hands that are kind of shaky, and then all Ino can feel is his touch brushing against her, everywhere, like he can't believe this is actually happening, and he wants to remember how every bit of her feels, forever.

He holds her from behind and kisses her neck, and Ino is informed that her breasts shouldn't be legal, as he cups first one, then the other, and nor should her ass, because wow. And Ino smirks and wiggles her butt against him and feels his hardness, and she asks him why he's still wearing pants, and reaches behind her and tugs at them, until he gets the message and amasses sufficient willpower to remove his hands from her boobs and pull his pants off properly.

And then are both naked, and, a moment later, they are entwined together on the bedspread, sinning dreadfully. Oh yeah, and the acorn thing – well, Ino admits that she was wrong, to Hidan's immediate gratification.

He is such a virgin, in so many ways, but also, to Ino's amusement and delight, it seems like he learned a thing or two from watching her bedroom activities with farmer-boy over the summer. Indeed, he appears to have been a _very_ keen observer, despite being a sanctimonious man of the cloth, because he knows just what kind of things do it for her, and he needs only a little guidance to do those things just right. He's good with his tongue, and Ino posits that, perhaps, it's because he never shuts up, so it gets so much exercise, which would explain it, and – and… and then coherent thought stops, and everything is just touches and suckles and rhythms and oh, yes, _yes_ , there it is…

So Ino dies a little death, and he almost does too – _shitfuckshit not yet_ – because, in his words, it is the _fucking hottest thing_ to see her finish because of him, but he keeps it together long enough for her to climb on top of him…

And he lasts about thirty seconds, poor thing, before she moves her hips _just so_ , and blows his goddamn mind.

VVV


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

 _In best understandings, sin began,  
Angels sinned first, then Devils, then Man  
_\- Donne

Ino looks down and the black form of Hidan below her grows paler and paler. She rolls off of him and pulls a sheet over them, relieved and satisfied in more ways than one.

It worked. The little death thing worked. And Jashin is a creep of a god with a pervy sense of humour, holy fuck…

But hey – it worked.

When did her life get this weird?

Ino's thoughts are interrupted by the unexpected sensation of something hot coiled around her neck.

"What the…?" mutters Ino, hooking a finger through the thing and pulling it over her head.

In the penumbra of the bedroom, she can make out a necklace of some sort hanging from her fingers – a necklace of heavy beaded metal, adorned with a simple geometric pendant. Altogether an innocuous find, except for the part where it magically appeared around her neck…

She hears Hidan's sharp intake of breath beside her when he sees it.

"Sweet fuck. My amulet."

Of course it's his amulet. _Of course_ it is. Ino feels sick – because here is a fresh reminder that, somehow, she has become messenger and herald of the worst and cruelest god in the world, who uses deaths great and small to make his moves in this earthly plane…

Ino shudders. The amulet was around her neck. It touched her, and it was like being touched by _him_. Ino can still feel the heat of it, as though it came directly from the god's hands, from whatever hellish abyss he inhabits.

She drops the amulet onto the covers and concentrates on not puking and thinks of how Jashin is a manipulative asshole, and why her, just, _why_...

Hidan picks up the amulet in slow, awe-filled movements, kisses it reverently, and then he kisses Ino's closed eyes, and her forehead, and her mouth.

"Miracle-girl," breathes Hidan, clutching the amulet to his chest in a white-knuckled grip like she just literally gave him his heart back. "Holy shit. I don't fucking know what to say…"

"Good," says Ino weakly. "Be speechless. Please."

He actually gets the message, for once in his life, and lies down next to her with his precious amulet gripped in his hands, and he cannot seem to decide what he wants to stare at more, the amulet, or her.

Ino feels the nausea start to recede from this latest unpleasant shock. She presses her fingertips to her eyelids and tells herself that this _must_ be it. The goddamn priest has all of his parts, and now he has his goddamn amulet – now she's done.

… right? _Please, please let me be done_ …

She stops herself before this becomes a full-on prayer, because Ino will never pray to Jashin.

Hidan is in a state of reverent bliss beside her.

"Angel."

"…What."

Incredibly, Hidan is actually searching for words. "Can I just – fuck, how do I even… first you put me together, then you _kill_ me in the most incredible way possible, and then you give me this back… how can I ever thank you, seriously…"

He gathers the amulet into a fist and presses it against his mouth. "I thought it was gone forever. Thought it'd be buried at the bottom of a river somewhere..."

Ino stares at the ceiling blankly. Hidan notices eventually, after he's babbled himself into silence about his precious amulet and its whereabouts past and present.

"You're tired," he says, propping himself onto an elbow to look at her drained, pale face. "This must've been exhausting. I'm always fuckin' beat after my ritual and I don't even, like, summon stuff into existence..."

"…You want some water or something?" he asks, when Ino does not respond.

"Stop being nice," mutters Ino tiredly. "It doesn't suit you."

He blinks at her, and then, a split-second later, reverts to his usual degree of obnoxiousness. "Fine. I'm getting you some water and you're gonna drink it, if I have to shove it down your throat."

Ino smiles despite herself; that's more like it.

Two minutes later, Hidan brings her approximately six gallons of water in a huge pot. When questioned about his choice of a vessel, he peevishly explains that it will save him multiple trips to the kitchen, _obviously_. And, after staring at him wordlessly, Ino hefts the pot to herself and drinks, because she is actually thirsty, and that wine is going to give her a hell of a hangover to remember it by, if she doesn't.

"Thanks," says Ino, because she does actually feel better after her long drink.

Hidan hoists the pot onto the bedside table and climbs into bed next to her. Ino rests against the headboard with the sheet drawn up around her chest. She hears him move and cracks open an eye just in time to see him lean over to kiss her bare shoulder, in the quiet, prayerful way that the faithful kiss their idols, statues of their saints, their rosaries… then he kisses her mouth, in the way that boys kiss girls that they're kind of in love with.

And it does funny things to her insides, that last kiss, because it's so pure and innocent and sweet and he has no idea what he's doing and neither does she, really, when you come down to it…

Ino puts a hand on his cheek and kisses him back, in the way that girls, who might kind of be falling in love a little, kiss boys, except she wouldn't do that, but if she did, maybe this is what it would feel like…

Hidan pulls back and stares at her in the dark, her hair tumbling over her shoulder in a sexy blonde mess, her breasts bound by the sheet, her neck still bearing a red line where the hot amulet was coiled around it.

"What are you doing…?" asks Ino eventually, when the persistent violet becomes too much.

"Waiting," says Hidan.

"… For what?"

"I dunno," says Hidan. "Whatever miracle you're gonna drop next."

Ino snorts. "I'm done with miracles for tonight. I really want to sleep, actually."

(Really, though, she's done with miracles forever, or so she _very fervently_ hopes.)

"I understand," says Hidan with an air of saintly benevolence that absolutely does not suit him.

They sit in silence for a while, until Ino decides that she ought to get up, because she needs to pee and clean up the gooey spots before going to bed. She informs Hidan of this when he asks where she's going and he sweetly fetches the candle to light her way to the bathroom, since the power is still out.

And then he ogles at her shamelessly as she comes back out of the bathroom, because she is still naked, which reminds her to pull on a more-or-less modest slip (she owns many, but modesty is not one of their attributes, generally speaking). She throws his boxers at him for good measure.

As she climbs back into bed, Hidan stares at her with a confused combination of veneration and want.

"What _now_?" asks Ino.

"I just – I can't fuckin' believe today happened," says Hidan. "This sexy-ass angel taunting me for _months_ … giving me these _thoughts_ … and now we did _it_ , and he didn't smite us immediately… and I got my amulet back? Holy shit…"

"Yay," says Ino drily as she fixes her pillow. "Jashin be praised."

"Seriously," says Hidan, completely missing her sarcasm, as usual. "Hey, can you do something for me?"

Ino, extremely ready to go to sleep at this point, gives him a questioning look in the candlelight.

Hidan holds out his amulet to her. "Put this on me."

"… Really? Can't you do it yourself?"

"No," says Hidan. "You do it. Feels like it would have _significance_ , 'cuz you're my angel and shit."

With a sigh, Ino pushes herself to a seated position and takes the amulet from his hands.

He bows his head and looks so devoutly serious that whatever tired snarky comment she was going to make dies in the back of her throat.

"There," says Ino gravely as she slips the amulet around his neck. "You're whole again. Go forth and serve Jashin, and long may you be a means to his horrible ends."

It's supposed to be a joke, this snarky little blessing, but as the words fall from her lips, Ino realizes that it's not. Because in the very moment that she places the amulet back in its rightful place around Hidan's neck, she feels a kind of a slackening in the air around her. That heavy sense of will and intent that has been plaguing Ino releases like a sigh, and she understands that, now, with this act, the priest is finally, truly, whole again.

Ino closes her eyes and tightens her fingers on Hidan's shoulders and she kind of wants to cry with relief, because this, _this_ feels like breathing again when you didn't know you were drowning…

The amulet glitters at her in the darkness around Hidan's pale neck and Ino knows, now, that there will be no more waterlilies haunting her with their sweet scent, no more downpours stubborn as a divine will, no more innocents dying, no more random extra bits of Hidan falling from the sky.

The priest is whole again, and free to wreak Jashin's havoc on the world.

It's over. Thank fuck, it's over.

Hidan touches the amulet around his neck and looks positively blissful. Ino finds herself pulled towards him and a chaste kiss is planted in the middle of her forehead, and another, less chaste, on her lips.

"Angel," says Hidan, holding her hands to his chest, so that her knuckles touch his amulet and his warm skin. "You – you make everything I've done – everything I've gone through for Jashin – so fuckin' worthwhile. You gotta tell him that. You gotta tell him _thank you_ , for sending you to me, and whatever I did to deserve it, I'm gonna do it again and again…"

Ino barely has a chance to nod, then his mouth is on hers again, and Ino kisses him back, because he adores her, and to a woman with her kind of ego, that is attractive beyond words…

"God damn, I love you, angel-girl," says Hidan against her lips.

Ino opens her eyes, cerulean darkened to cobalt by his kisses.

"…Religiously, I mean," says Hidan before she can say something. "Obviously."

"Obviously," says Ino with a knowing smile against his mouth, because there is nothing religious about the way he is kissing her right now, about his hunger for her, about the way he wants her. This is carnal, not spiritual, this is beyond a priest-boy's distant angel-worship. This is a very human, mortal kind of love.

Oh, he has it _so_ bad.

"So," says Hidan, breathing her in, his face in her neck. "You wanna die again tonight, or something?"

"Let's not push it," says Ino, smiling because an hour ago he was resisting her playful advances something fierce, and now look at him, all torqued up and ready to go again…

Hidan sighs ruefully. "I guess. We don't want to get smitten."

"I think one of us is already smitten," whispers Ino as she turns away from him and snuggles into her pillow.

"What?"

"Nothing," says Ino. "Shh. I'm sleeping."

She can _feel_ the way his eyes have narrowed at her, but hers are closed and she keeps her expression neutral.

Hidan spends some time fussing with the sheets, and then he settles down, and there is silence at last.

Then she hears him snicker to himself in the dark.

Ino kicks him and he laughs harder.

"…This better be hilarious," says Ino.

She can hear the grin in his voice. "I _so_ got laid tonight. You said I wouldn't, and I did."

And Ino tries to hold it back, but she can't, so she laughs too, despite herself, because he is such a self-satisfied bastard, and worst of all, he's _right_.

Her laughter seems to delight him, he pulls her close and kisses her ear and mutters some prayer of praise and gratitude to Jashin, and some words of worship and of love to her, and the candle sputters and goes out, and they fall asleep together.

VVV

 **Author's note:** tell me what you think. _Tell me._


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's note:** So we come to the end. It is, in keeping with the rest of the story, unabashed fluff.

You know, when I was first idly playing with the concept of this story in my head, this "Ino finds a head that won't shut up, then she finds the rest of him" thing, it was supposed to be a one-shot type deal. I knew how I wanted it to start and I knew how I wanted it to end, and there were only a couple thousand words between point A and point B.

Then I started writing, and the story was like, _this isn't a one-shot._

And I was like, _you're not the boss of me._

And the story was like, _you're going to write 50k words about this random-ass pairing. FYI._

And I was like, _no._

And many months passed, during which I wrote some chapters here and there, and then when I put it all together, I found that I had written a Hidan/Ino novella.

And the story was like, _surprise._

VVV

 **Chapter 17**

 _I love her and it is the beginning of everything._  
\- Scott F. Fitzgerald

Ino sleeps wonderfully – free, finally, of the burden of a god's _extremely_ poorly-communicated expectations and desires. Now she is the recipient of that god's blessing for her aid in piecing together his priest. The blessing is a dubious one; it takes the form of the priest's love-worship and Ino is not quite sure how to feel about it.

But, nevertheless. Ino stretches contentedly in the dawn's light: she is done with Jashin and the certainty that her role in these divine intrigues is finally over makes her heart gladder than it has been all summer.

And today, today is her before-last day in Kurashiki, so this marks the end of the _weird_ and a return to the _normal_. She will be happy to leave this village behind – the broken Sonkei who everyone will cry to her about, the collapsed bridge that is just beginning to be reconstructed, with its memorial to the two little girls, and then there's Hidan…

The man in question is staring at Ino when she finally opens her eyes, his fingers entangled in his amulet, his fair hair and skin tinted by the red light of the dawn. Ino looks down and sees that her own hair snaking across the pillow is reddened by the blood-red sunrise.

They look at each other in the soft crimson light. Hidan opens his mouth as if to speak, then he closes it again. His eyes search hers.

"Spit it out," says Ino, because it worries her when he hesitates to talk.

Hidan falters for another moment. "Did… yesterday actually happen?"

There is such a wonder in his voice that Ino props herself up on her elbows to look at him. "Yeah, it did."

"Damn," says Hidan. "And I'm still here…"

"What – you thought you'd wake up in the fiery pits of hell?" asks Ino.

"Kinda," says Hidan, still looking wonderingly at her.

"I told you it's what he wanted," says Ino.

"I know," says Hidan, lying back into his pillow slowly. "But… good things _never_ happen to me."

These words are heavy with the story of a largely unhappy life, which makes Ino pity him a little, even if he's Hidan and he probably doesn't deserve her pity.

Since she doesn't have a ready answer for him, Ino seeks distraction in the form of assuaging her thirst with last night's pot of water. She hefts the pot towards herself and takes a long drink, then puts it back down on the side table – and something crunches loudly as she does so.

Ino frowns and lifts the pot back up, wondering if she left a hairclip on the table and just broke it or something – but no, it is a small pile of pretzels that she just smushed to bits. She stares at it in silence for a moment.

"So, general question," says Ino eventually. "Why are there pretzels on my bedside table?"

Hidan cracks open an eye and gives her a sly look. "Breakfast in bed. I know you liked it when Jizzball did it."

"Wow," says Ino, wanting to burst into laughter but not doing so in case it might vex him. "Thank you. Pretzels, though?"

"The breakfast of champions," says Hidan.

Ino decides not to be an ungrateful snot and eats one of the broken pretzels. Hidan reaches over and helps himself to a handful, too.

"I wanted to make an omelette," says Hidan, chewing loudly. "But then I realized I don't know how to make an omelette."

Ino looks at him. "How did you go through life never learning to make an omelette?"

"Because," says Hidan, "I was learning how to stab people instead. Duh."

"I learned how to do both," says Ino with a shrug.

"That's 'cuz you're a girl," says Hidan. "You're supposed to do that cooking and cleaning shit…"

He anticipates her immediate flare of annoyance as well as her punch, which slams into the mattress instead. Hidan laughs from the edge of the bed and Ino can see that he was riling her up on purpose. She feigns another hit, then, when he dodges that one, smacks him in the face with the pillow that she had clutched behind her back.

"Ow," says Hidan, blinking hard.

"Did you like that?" says Ino, whipping his pillow around too and pummelling him soundly with both of them. "Have some more."

Then, because he's laughing so hard, she straddles him and tries to cram one of the pillows into his mouth, and she tells him here, eat this, this is better than omelette, this is the _real_ breakfast of champions.

He squirms below her, laughing so hard and being _so pretty_ about it, god it's almost unfair, and he asks her, when he manages to free his mouth enough, if this is her reliving her suffocation fantasy thing, because he can totally fuckin' work with that, if that's what they're doing right now, only she should take off her panties first because in _his_ fantasy, she's naked as she does it…

Ino holds his wrists down and calls him a smarmy motherfucker who can go fuck himself – ugh, aren't there stronger words than fuck? – and he tells her that it turns him on when she talks dirty, so keep doing that, angel-slut, and he grinds himself against her, and his eyes are purple and his mouth is kissable and his hair is messy and he wants her right now, this pious priest-boy, which is pretty much the hottest thing…

And it's so unfair, how he's so much stronger than she is that after humoring her outburst, he can lift her off him and smash her down onto the mattress so easily it's almost insulting. Ino briefly entertains the thought of using her technique on him, when he looks down at her, but he looks away quickly, which tells her that he knows that she could, and for now, that's enough.

So then it's just Hidan hovering on top of Ino, breathing pretzel-breath at each other and both of them look stupidly attractive with their sleep-tousled hair and scanty sleeping clothes, and Ino latches her legs around his waist, and he collapses onto her, and they make out vigorously, and all thoughts of omelettes are temporarily forgotten.

VVV

Ino washes up and pulls on some clothes and finds herself in an omelette kind of mood for breakfast, except she has no eggs left, so… yogurt it is. She pulls out some mangoes and bananas to go with it.

As she is slicing the fruit, Hidan meanders into the kitchen. She hears him come to an abrupt halt behind her.

"Wow," says Hidan.

"What?" says Ino.

"What are _those_?"

Ino turns around to see what he's talking about and finds that it is her butt that is the subject of Hidan's rapt attention.

"Um," says Ino. "Yoga pants...?"

"Damn," says Hidan, waving his hand as though he's just touched something hot. " _Damn_."

Ino can't hold back a smile because, though she knows that she looks amazing in yoga pants, it is particularly gratifying to see Hidan's eyes almost boggle out of his head.

"They're comfy," says Ino. "And way more practical than a dress for running around packing and cleaning and stuff, which is basically what today is going to be, so…"

Ino trails off when she sees that her explanation of the virtues of yoga pants is being completely ignored. Hidan is standing a small distance away. His hands are held out in front of him with both index fingers and thumbs joined at the tips to create a rectangle, through which he is staring at her butt.

"…What are you doing?" asks Ino eventually.

"Framing."

"I see."

She really doesn't, but. Ino resumes her slicing, half-listening to Hidan shuffle around behind her, apparently looking for the perfect angle from which to view her ass.

"You know," says Hidan, "there were these two dudes, in that kidnapping gang, who used to piss me off…"

"Doesn't everyone piss you off?" interrupts Ino.

"Almost," says Hidan. "Except you, most of the time. _Anyway_ … they were like these pansy artistic types, and they'd have these boring-ass conversations that lasted forever about what art really was, all intellectual, or whatever, so fuckin' boring I used to wish for death when they got started…"

"And…?"

" _And_ ," says Hidan with feeling, "if I ever see them again, I'm gonna tell them they were both wrong about everything they thought they knew about art."

"Oh?" says Ino.

" _This_ is art," says Hidan, giving Ino's ass a very sound smack.

Ino gasps in surprise and finds herself unable to decide whether she's annoyed or amused.

"It's a fuckin' masterpiece," says Hidan, firmly gripping her hips from behind and looking down.

Ino shakes her head and bites back a smile. Amused. Definitely amused.

She slips a freshly sliced mango piece into his mouth over her shoulder. "You're a huge dork."

"Mm. Cool. I like mangoes," says Hidan conversationally as he grabs a handful of ass and makes Ino squeak.

"Do you _mind_?" says Ino, elbowing him away. "I'm trying to cut this and still have all my fingers afterwards… go pray or something."

"Nah," says Hidan. "I'm, like, celebrating Jashin's blessings right now."

Ino notices the way he's rubbing up against her. "…Are you about to celebrate in your pants?"

"Thinking about it," says Hidan.

He sees her reach for a banana and opens his mouth to say something–

"Before you ask," says Ino, cutting him off crisply, "I don't want your banana."

"Pfft," says Hidan into her hair with a touch of disappointment.

When Ino finishes cutting up the fruit, Hidan lifts her onto the counter and stands between her knees with his hands on her thighs and he notes that yoga pants do have one flaw, it's that dresses make for better upskirts. Ino shuts him up with some mangoes and some bananas and some spoonfuls of yogurt, and this second breakfast is definitely a better one than the pretzels.

VVV

While Hidan showers, Ino disappears downstairs to the dusty store-room behind the flower shop to find her luggage, because she has been procrastinating on her packing, but today, she's getting that shit done, because tomorrow morning, she's out of here.

She drags her suitcases upstairs and throws them open in the living room and begins to pack her things, humming cheerfully to herself and nibbling occasionally on a broken pretzel.

By the time Hidan has finished taking _forever_ in the shower, she has mostly finished emptying her closet out and is folding her summer dresses on the kitchen table.

Hidan moseys over, still prettily damp from the shower, and shirtless, and he leans against the fridge with his hands in his pockets and watches her work. (Either that or he's watching her butt; Ino can't tell from where she's standing and she wants to concentrate on folding so she doesn't turn around to verify.)

Hidan sighs heavily and saunters over to seat himself on the counter, directly in Ino's line of sight, now, presumably so that she can feel the full weight of his baleful stare as she folds. Ino can all but feel his mood sinking and she supposes the sight of her packing is actually driving home the fact that she is, in fact, leaving.

But he's known this for a while now, and it's not her fault that he's been in denial or whatever for weeks. His current inaction (and accusatory stare) actually make Ino impatient, because, early morning pillow-fights notwithstanding, she has a ton of stuff to do today and doesn't need his laziness or his guilt-tripping interfering, so she dumps an armload of freshly-washed lingerie into his lap.

"Here," says Ino. "Make yourself useful. Fold."

Ino scuttles off to the laundry room to sort the next load and feels the weight of Hidan's unhappy gaze on her all the way down the hall.

She returns to the kitchen to find Hidan holding up a particularly scandalous scrap of lace.

"The fuck is this?" asks Hidan, genuinely perplexed, rotating the thing around. "Is this supposed to be panties? Which way…? What does it even cover…?"

"I asked you to fold, not judge," says Ino, while privately reflecting that perhaps she should have given him the dresses instead, because she does have some pretty slutty stuff in that pile, but he'd probably fold the dresses all wrong and get them all wrinkly… no, maybe she should have given him the socks.

"Oh, I'm not judging, wonder-slut," says Hidan with an exaggerated leer. "I'm _imagining_."

"Don't be pervy," says Ino, sliding an empty box next to him on the counter. "Fold it. Put it in here. Don't think about it too much, you'll only hurt yourself."

Hidan folds up a few other pieces in relative silence until he comes upon a pink babydoll with an indecently low neckline.

"Wow. How come I've never seen you wear _this_?" says Hidan, as though Ino not wearing it for him is a personal slight.

Ino glances up from her dresses. "Oh, that. It's for… special occasions."

"Special occasions," says Hidan. "Huh."

A moment later, he says, casually, "so hey… did I tell you? It's my birthday today."

"I thought it was your birthday, like, two months ago," says Ino.

"Was it?"

"Yeah. You wanted to undo my zipper to celebrate," says Ino.

"Oh yeah," says Hidan, rubbing a hand along his jaw. "I forgot about that…"

He ponders the paradox for a while, and then, by all appearances, finds a solution, because he looks up at Ino suddenly and wiggles his silvery eyebrows.

"I have multiple birthdays," says Hidan.

"Do you now," says Ino distractedly, because she actually has things to do, unlike this chatterbox priest who cannot accomplish even the most simple tasks without going ADD on her.

"Yeah. Like the day I was born. And the day I found Jashin. And…"

He pauses dramatically, so Ino humours him and looks up. "…And?"

"… the day you found me, angel-girl."

Ino laughs. "Wow. _Suave_."

"I know. So it's one of my _other_ birthdays," says Hidan. He thrusts the pink babydoll at her. "So put this on."

"No."

"How about this one," says Hidan, dangling a sexy purple slip towards her. "I think it would really bring out the colour of my eyes, you know, when I'm between your legs…"

"I'm a little busy," says Ino, not bothering to look up.

"What about this?" says Hidan, pulling a skimpy bra out of the pile. "Ooh. Or this? Or this… or _this_ … shit, no, _this_ one…"

She should have given him the socks.

Ino ignores him, so Hidan eventually makes his way through the pile (with nonstop raunchy commentary) and the box is filled with more-or-less folded lingerie, almost to overflowing.

"Fuck, man," says Hidan, pressing down onto the pile to squeeze the box shut. "How many of those things do you even need?"

"Need?" says Ino. "Probably not that many."

"How many do you _have_?" asks Hidan suspiciously, and Ino smiles, because he's gotten pretty good at reading between her lines.

"My wardrobe at home is probably… a bit excessive," says Ino.

" _What_ …? This isn't all of it?" says Hidan, pointing at the box.

Ino shrugs. "Just because you make do with three pairs of boxers doesn't mean everyone else has to."

"Worldly possessions aren't what's important," says Hidan with haughty self-righteousness.

"You're right, of course," says Ino. She plucks a pair of deep red panties that dangles from the edge of the box. "They don't matter. I was going to put these on for you… but I think I'll burn the whole box right now."

Ino twirls the panties between her fingers and looks at Hidan innocently.

He glares at her. She bites her lip to prevent herself from smiling, but her eyes are bright.

"You think you're so damn clever," says Hidan, sliding off the counter and making for her.

Ino backs away, giggling for real now, because she squeezed him _so good_ just then, between his sanctimony and his humanity.

"Such a fucking _funny_ little angel," says Hidan, boxing her into the corner.

"I know," says Ino, clutching the panties in the way that he clutches his amulet. "Praise Jashin."

He notices the movement and understands her continued teasing. His eyes darken at her. The wall stops her from further retreat, so Ino looks up at Hidan expectantly, wondering which will talk to her next, the priest, or the man.

It is the man, but he doesn't talk; he holds her against the wall and presses his mouth to hers, aggressively, two, three, four, five times, before letting her take a breath.

"You take such fuckin' _delight_ in reminding me, don't you," says Hidan.

"Reminding you of… what?" says Ino, kind of absently, because he is kissing his way down her neck in the most delicious way…

"That I'm just a _guy_ ," says Hidan, "and of fucking course I want to see you in those things."

"Maybe if you weren't so holier-than-thou, I wouldn't have to humble you so often," says Ino.

His breath catches when she takes her turn trailing kisses down his neck and biting small bites along his clavicle.

"Maybe if you weren't so goddamn beautiful, I wouldn't have to remind myself to be holy," says Hidan, sliding a hand behind her head and tilting it back and pulling her into a very hot kiss.

Ino mutters something incoherent in response, because, somehow, this bumbling obnoxious priest-boy makes her weak in the knees like no other man…

"I'm supposed to be packing," gasps Ino when Hidan bends her over the counter and tugs her yoga pants down.

That is the last coherent sentence that is spoken for the next little while, unless Hidan's grunt of "fucking… _fuck_ …" some eight minutes later counts.

Ino slips away to the bathroom to clean up. When she returns to the kitchen, she finds Hidan perched on the counter again, fingering his amulet dreamily.

"So just to be clear," says Ino as she returns to her folding. "I'm not burning the box?"

The violet can be _so_ vicious.

VVV


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

VVV

 _I love you as one loves certain dark things,  
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.  
_\- Pablo Neruda

VVV

Early that evening, Ino's suitcases and boxes are piled high onto an ox-drawn cart that will make its slow, meandering way towards Konoha in the coming week.

She keeps a small backpack of essentials for her own walk back to Konoha, a journey of two or three days from here. Her pack is filled to capacity because Ino has difficulties packing light, but at least it snaps closed and doesn't immediately burst at the seams. (She _probably_ doesn't need six tops and three dresses and two pairs of shoes and a hairdryer for the journey, but _maybe_ she does.)

Ino drags her pack to the front door, ready for her departure the next morning, then stands back and observes the irreproachably tidy apartment.

Well, the apartment is _mostly_ irreproachably tidy. There is the slight problem of Hidan, who is currently splayed disconsolately across the couch. He is decidedly not coping well as Ino's departure looms and has been growing progressively grouchier all day.

"You hungry?" asks Ino. "All the food's gone, so I was going to grab some takeout…"

" _No_ ," says Hidan with a significant amount of pout.

His stomach growls, audible even from where Ino stands. She keeps her face straight and shrugs. "Suit yourself, cranky-pants. I'll be back later."

She slams the door behind her just in time to mask the sound of her laughter.

However, as Ino makes her way down the stairs to the flower shop, she grows serious, because there is something that she wants to do on this last night in Kurashiki. She creeps silently into the dark flower shop, plucks two yellow chrysanthemums from the flower cooler, and heads to the old bridge.

What should have been a five minute walk takes Ino almost half an hour, because her progress is interrupted here and there as she is hailed by neighbours and customers who want to chit-chat. Ino takes advantage of these moments to bid the quaint folks a final farewell, because she doesn't intend to come back to Kurashiki any time in the near future – or ever, if she's honest.

Just as the sun disappears behind the horizon, the old bridge comes into view. It is in the process of being rebuilt; Ino can see materials piled in neat stacks here and there in the dusk. She can also see, from the glimmer on its surface, that the water has sunk to its normal level – and that it is studded with tufts of reeds and cattails, but that there isn't a waterlily in sight. It is an absence which, to any other observer, might be quite unremarkable – but to Ino, it means the world.

A small memorial has been erected next to the bridge in honour of the two little girls who drowned. Ino kneels in front of it and looks at the photos and cards that are scattered around, but, after a moment, she finds that her eyes are brimming with tears, so everything is blurry and there isn't much point in looking anymore.

She lays her two chrysanthemums down gently.

"I'm so sorry," whispers Ino. "I don't know if it was actually my fault, or it wasn't, but either way, I'm so sorry."

It is a relief to voice these words of heartfelt apology and to make this gesture, however small, out of respect for the two lives that were taken here, whether by the whim of nature or the caprice of a real dickhead of a god. Ino kneels in silence for a long time. The only thing she can see through her tears is the pale gold of the flowers, almost luminous in the growing dusk.

She somehow doesn't hear the man approach; it is only when he lays a heavy hand on her shoulder that she notices him there. She glances up in surprise – it is the old man who owns the fruit stand down the street.

Ino sniffs and tries to wipe away her tears discreetly.

"A sad thing," says the old man.

He notices her tears and hands her a tissue that smells of incense.

"Thank you," says Ino.

Silence falls between them and the night-time breeze ruffles the petals of the twin chrysanthemums. The photographs and cards move slightly, as though invisible hands touch them, except it's just the wind.

"It's not fair that this happened," says Ino.

"It isn't," says the old man.

"Then _why_ …?"

The old man sighs heavily. "They kill us for their sport."

He gives her shoulder a fortifying squeeze before shuffling away with slow old man steps. Ino watches him go until he disappears into the night.

VVV

Ino takes a moment to wipe away any lingering tears and allow the redness to fade from her eyes before she walks to the Thai takeout place down the street. When it comes time to pay for her order, she discovers that they've given it to her on the house, because it's her last meal in Kurashiki, which is so sweet that she almost wants to cry again.

So wow, she _really_ needs to get a grip right now.

Ino makes her way up the stairs to her apartment enveloped in a cloud of the delicious smells of curry and pad thai.

"I'm home," calls Ino as she enters.

Hidan is in the bedroom, praying, or pretending to, and ignoring her.

Ino lays out various takeout containers onto the kitchen table and opens their lids so that their fragrant contents waft throughout the apartment. Hidan ignores her some more.

Then she snaps open a pair of chopsticks, loudly, and Hidan materializes next to the table almost instantly.

"Oh, hello," says Ino. "Good prayer?"

"Godly," says Hidan, seating himself swiftly next to her and grabbing at the nearest container with his usual lack of manners.

Ino rests the tips of her chopsticks on the back of his hand with just enough pressure to suggest impalement if he moves it any further.

"Excuse me?" says Ino. "I thought you didn't want anything."

"I didn't," says Hidan. "Now I do. _Duh_."

"Well I'm glad to hear that," says Ino with a sweet smile. "I brought you something special. None of this run-of-the-mill stuff."

"Oh?" says Hidan, looking hopeful in spite of his grumpiness.

"Yeah," says Ino, digging up a package from between the takeout containers that are heaped onto the table. "Here."

It takes him a long time to open the package – Ino made very sure that it would, with obnoxious amounts of tape – but eventually, and with much swearing, he manages.

He peers at the little satchel curiously, and then he reads the label properly, and he cracks up with sudden, unexpected laughter.

"Fuck you," he says, tossing the satchel of deluxe gerbil pellets onto the table. "Funny, but fuck you."

Ino grins at him. "Have your curry and quit pouting at me."

Hidan pulls the curry towards him, then gives Ino a sly look and sprinkles some gerbil pellets on top, just to gross her out.

"Why would you do that?" says Ino, exasperated. "You just ruined a perfect curry…"

"Hey, I like it," says Hidan, vacuuming the mixture into his mouth. "Adds some… texture… or some shit."

"I don't believe you," says Ino, watching him in disgust. "…What's it taste like?"

Hidan chews pensively. "Cardboard."

"Yum," says Ino, turning her attention back to her pad thai.

They eat their food in more-or-less silence, except for Hidan's gross slurping, which he is sharply reprimanded for on several occasions.

He finishes his food, leans back on his chair so that only two legs are on the floor, and stares at the ceiling in a thoughtful kind of way as Ino finishes her meal.

Then he scratches casually at his neck. And then at his collarbone.

And then he pushes his amulet out of the way and rubs his sternum vigorously.

He blinks once or twice. Ino watches as he, _very_ nonchalantly, reaches over and grabs the packet of gerbil food and, _extremely_ casually, reads the ingredient list.

He sighs deeply. "Figures."

"What?" asks Ino.

Then she looks at his reddening chest, and the package in his hand, and the empty curry bowl in front of him, with a few pellets still stuck around the rim.

Ino stares at him. She has no words.

VVV

Antihistamine cream is applied, lectures on imbecility are given, and the midnight hour rings. Ino climbs into this particular bed for the last time and she's almost too excited to sleep, because tomorrow she heads back to normalcy, her family, her friends, her village and its uncommonly large population of loveable village idiots.

"What are you looking so damn happy about?" asks Kurashiki's village idiot morosely when Ino snuggles into her pillow with a small smile.

"I'm happy," says Ino, "because I'm going home."

Hidan stares darkly at the ceiling.

"Are you going to get grumpy again?" asks Ino, propping herself onto her elbows to look at him. "You've known I was leaving since the beginning. Don't be a Jizzface about this."

Hidan snorts, because that is the first time that Ino has used his particularly unkind name for farmer-boy, and apparently, that is amusing.

"You weren't Jizzface's personal fucking angel," says Hidan.

"I think he'd say I was."

"Whatever," says Hidan. "You're mine. Jashin gave you to me. And now you're trying to bail."

"I put you back together. That was my _purpose_ , if you remember," says Ino. "I'm done now. You don't need me anymore."

"Yes I do."

Ino rolls her eyes. "Do you? Really?"

"Yeah."

" _How_ do you still need me?" asks Ino, squirming closer to him. "This should be good."

" _Way_ too many ways to list," says Hidan with finality, as if this non-answer should close the discussion immediately and in his favour.

"Mm, you'll need to do better than that," says Ino, shaking her head. "How about you start with one."

Hidan stares at the ceiling, pouting and thinking simultaneously, apparently. Ino indulges in studying his profile for a moment, that perfect nose, those cheekbones, those eyelashes, that fair skin almost as flawless as hers, that hair that is so well-arranged right now that she just wants to stick both hands in it and mess it up and have a fight with him about it…

"Well?" prompts Ino before she gets all hot and bothered.

"Fine: I don't know where to buy that itchy cream stuff," says Hidan, gesturing to the tube on the side table. "I'll die without you."

"You can't die, Hidan," says Ino.

"That's not the point."

Ino laughs, because that is totally the point, and he's being a huge doofus. "I can tell you where to buy the cream. It's called a pharmacy."

"Never heard of one."

"Liar."

"Seriously."

"Lying's a sin, Hidan."

"Okay, so problem two," says Hidan quickly. "I don't have any money to buy things from pharmacies, and you cry if I steal shit, even from heathens, you damn goodie-goodie…"

"You're a mercenary nin," says Ino. "You must get paychecks for your work, no–?"

"Problem three," interrupts Hidan. "I definitely lost that kidnapping demon vessels gig, seeing as I disappeared halfway through and kinda forgot to tell them what happened, and that was like, ages ago…"

"So find another job," says Ino with a small shrug.

Hidan holds up a finger. "Well. Problem… uh… what are we at now, twenty-six?–"

"Four," says Ino.

Hidan narrows his eyes at her and looks as though he doubts her counting abilities. He nevertheless continues. "Problem four. All the jobs I lined up before this, I kind of… killed the guys who were supposed to be the boss."

"I see," says Ino. "And why did you do that?"

"I have a problem with authority," says Hidan.

Ino raises one of her perfect eyebrows. "So why didn't you kill the boss of the demon vessel gang?"

"I couldn't. I tried and I couldn't. Then he tried to kill me, the fuckface, and he couldn't. And I couldn't kill the dude who was my partner, either. So we figured it'd be a good fit."

Ino shakes her head. "So what you're saying is… you lost the one job that would have worked out for you. In the whole world."

"Yes," says Hidan. "See? You're starting to get it. This is why you have to stay with me. And you can pay for shit."

"I'm not your sugar mama," says Ino.

"Don't be," says Hidan, taking her hand and looking at her with those violet eyes. "Be my angel-wife."

Ino smiles in spite of herself, because he's so _cute_ and _innocent_ sometimes and it's doing funny things to her, goddamn…

"Your angel-wife," repeats Ino, when the stupid urge to squeal and pinch his cheeks and call him adorable _finally_ passes.

"Yes. And we can live sexily ever after."

"You know, I _kinda_ like the sound of this angel-wife thing, because it's got a pretty ring to it," says Ino with a smile she can't repress, "but I don't think that's a thing."

"It is now," says Hidan, making fleeting eye contact with her and holding her hand to his chest. "If you like the sound of it…"

His heart beats a little faster under her palm and they stare at each other, and Ino isn't sure whether they're still joking at this point, or whether they're being serious. But they can't be being serious, because there's no such thing as an angel-wife, and if there was, Ino wouldn't be his, because she's not that crazy or stupid or in love ( _never_ that last one, right?), and anyway, he's totally messing around, like he always is, isn't he…?

Ino looks at Hidan to decipher, one way or another, his actual feelings on the matter, but, perhaps precisely for that reason, he won't meet her eyes. He stares at the ceiling, his look carefully guarded but his actions less so; he is pressing her hand to his chest and she can feel the metallic heat of his amulet caught between his fast-beating heart and her hand. He presses so hard that Ino can feel the lines of the pendant marking themselves into her palm, there amidst her life line and her heart line and her fate line, connecting those paths together with their sacred geometry…

The thought seems scary to Ino, who wants to pull her hand away. And this gesture of Hidan's tells her that he is actually _not_ joking, which is altogether quite a disturbing prospect, all things considered.

This is not a good conversation to be having tonight, this last night of Ino's in Kurashiki; it is not a conversation that will be conducive to them going their separate ways in the morning, which they must do, for many very good reasons…

God _damn_ , this was just a summer thing.

Ino pulls her hand out from under Hidan's gently, but also, firmly, because he is so reluctant to let it go. She glances discreetly at her palm and sees the red lines of the pendant there, fading quickly, but there, and she pulls her hand under the sheet because she doesn't want Hidan to see that she has been marked by the divine in this understated but undisputable way.

Ino retreats to safer conversational territory as casually as she can because at this precise moment there are uncertainties weaving their way into her certainties, which is something she neither enjoys nor wants right now.

"Anyway," says Ino. "I really am done. Jashin released me the minute I put that amulet back on you. So now you can go on terrorizing mankind, and I can carry on with my life."

"Which is also terrorizing mankind," says Hidan.

"Not quite _terrorizing_ ," says Ino. "That's kind of a strong word."

"Zombifying them, whatever," says Hidan with a dismissive gesture. "Close enough."

Ino shakes her head. " _Anyway._ We're talking about you, not me. Where will you go? What will you do?"

"I haven't really thought that far ahead," says Hidan grouchily. "I hate planning shit."

"Yeah, I'm aware of that," says Ino.

Hidan shrugs. "Maybe I wait for Jashin to give me a sign."

"A sign."

"A _sign_. Like this," says Hidan, closing his eyes and looking pious. "Almighty Jashin. If my angel's supposed to stay with me, make her a total hottie."

He opens his eyes and looks at Ino. "There. A total hottie. See? It's a sign. Stay with me."

"I'm not sure that really counts as a sign," says Ino.

"You're too cynical, angel," says Hidan, shaking his head gravely. "You gotta open your heart."

"You're _so_ full of it," says Ino, laughing.

He reaches a hand into her bra and closes his eyes.

"What are you doing?" asks Ino.

"Opening your heart to the world," says Hidan as he gropes at her breast and pulls away her bra down.

"Right."

"Jashin," says Hidan, closing his eyes. "If my angel's supposed to stay with me, give me a half-chub right now."

Then his eyes fly open and he wiggles his eyebrows at Ino.

" _Really_ , Hidan," says Ino.

"Gimme your hand," says Hidan.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes," says Hidan, snatching Ino's hand before she can pull it away and dragging it to his crotch.

" _Ugh._ "

"See? Signs. _Everywhere_."

VVV


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

VVV

 _It's so fluffy, I'm gonna die  
_ \- Little girl with unicorn stuffie

VVV

The next morning, Ino showers and eats a quick breakfast and does a last bit of tidying up before she leaves this apartment for good. Of course, this last round of tidying involves making the bed one last time, an activity that is made slightly more complex by Hidan's groggy refusal to get up.

He steadfastly ignores Ino's yells and her shaking of his shoulders and her threats about buckets of water, and he resists her attempts to drag him off the bed with impressive amounts of inertia. It is only when she lands a perfect slap on his ass – one that echoes _magnificently_ throughout the bedroom – and says, _this_ is art, that he evinces a sign of life by springing out of bed and chasing her around the apartment.

Ino lets him catch her and kiss her and then she makes the bed and quite heartlessly kicks Hidan out of the apartment and locks it up. She brings Kiku the key in the shop downstairs and bids farewell and good luck to her cousin. Kiku gives her a tight, teary hug, and they part with many promises to write to each other, that Ino, for her part, already knows she won't keep.

And so Ino hefts her backpack onto her shoulders and makes her way to the hamlet's front gates, where Hidan materializes out of nowhere to fall into step beside her. Ino raises an eyebrow but says nothing; after all, there are two paths out of Kurashiki, one that goes north, and one that goes south, and Ino fully intends to take whichever one Hidan doesn't, for many _very_ good reasons.

Of course, Hidan has other ideas. Ino makes her way down the southern path for a few paces, experimentally, until she looks behind her and sees that Hidan is following her, real casual-like, his hands in his pockets, his open shirt fluttering loosely in the breeze.

And you know what? He's so _pretty_ , with his fine features and his perfect hair and his svelte body, it makes Ino want to climb him like a tree right now. Which is annoying. Ino might actually be jealous of him, if she wasn't so drop-dead gorgeous herself.

She waits for him to catch up to her and tries not to eye-fuck him too much as he approaches.

"I'm going to Konoha," says Ino matter-of-factly.

"I know," says Hidan.

"You can't come with me," says Ino.

Hidan gives her a beautiful pout. "Yes I can."

"No, you can't." Ino gestures to the northern path. "Cloud is that way."

Hidan looks at the sunlit northern path and looks unimpressed. "So? I don't wanna go back to Cloud. That's where fuckin' katana-boy is."

"Well – your kidnapping gang is up that way somewhere too, isn't it? Go talk to them, see if they can give you any leads…"

"Eh," says Hidan, shrugging, as though this option is just as uninteresting as the first.

Ino tries again. "Isn't there some kind of Jashin temple in that general direction?"

"No," says Hidan. "The whole world is Jashin's temple."

"You know, that's a beautiful thought, but –"

"Like you," interrupts Hidan.

Ino clenches her teeth hard to hold back a smile. "Flattery won't get you to Konoha."

"What will?"

"Hidan," says Ino.

"Ino," says Hidan.

They look at each other. The blue sky deepens the colour of Hidan's gaze and brightens Ino's eyes, the breeze tugs at Hidan's open shirt and flirts prettily with Ino's hair. Falling leaves swirl in the space between them, drawing out the lines of the invisible forces that pull them to one another, except it's just the wind.

He takes a step forward. She takes a step back.

"So," says Ino. "You're _definitely_ not going north?"

"Nope," says Hidan, taking three steps forward and crowding up against her on the southern path.

"Okay," says Ino brightly. "I am, though. Konoha is that way. So I guess I'll see you around, priest-boy. Have a nice life."

And with that, Ino gives Hidan a pretty sort of salute and a smile and prances away to the northern path.

"Real funny," calls Hidan after her.

After her initial careless frolic down the path, Ino finds her steps slowing. It surprises her, the sudden sense of _lack_ that she feels, when she draws away from Hidan with the intention of leaving him behind forever.

Ino learns a hard lesson, then – that you don't know quite how deeply intertwined you are with someone until the moment you walk away. It creeps up on you by movements slow and gradual, here and there, progressing largely unnoticed, until the moment you try to leave – and then, it tears.

Ino pauses to process this unexpected discovery. Then she frowns and clenches her jaw. So let it tear. She can handle it.

To mask the hesitation in her step, she turns around to wave cheerfully at Hidan before carrying on. She is surprised to find that her heart swells unexpectedly in a sort of sadness, because Hidan looks bereft and so very _lonely_ , standing in the middle of the path by himself, with absolutely nothing to his name but the amulet around his neck, his worship of Jashin, and his love for the woman who is walking away from him.

For fuck's sake. Ino rolls her eyes at her own sentimentality, but she nevertheless stops. Because the tearing, she could handle, but that heart-swell hurt in a whole other way, and if it's anything like what he's experiencing, well, ouch.

For a woman who has made such a pastime of smashing hearts, this kind of empathy is unfamiliar and rare. Ino files it away for further contemplation; for now, she has her own messy-ass feelings to deal with, on top of this clingy priest-boy.

"Useless," says Ino, shaking her head. "You didn't even bring supplies, did you?"

"Of fucking course I did," says Hidan, looking vexed. "You think I'm dumb or something?"

Ino sees no evidence of a pack or a bag or anything. She raises an eyebrow. "Where?"

"Here," says Hidan. He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a little satchel. It's the stupid gerbil pellets. Ino is torn between exasperation and amusement.

"Hope you brought the –" starts Ino.

Hidan dangles the tube of antihistamine cream at her, which shuts her up, which makes him look smug.

"Wow," says Ino. "That's almost approaching a plan. I'm impressed."

"Hey, I try," says Hidan, ambling over to her. "I have another plan, too, if my current one doesn't work out. I have, like, plans out the yin-yang right now."

"Oh? And what's your current plan?" asks Ino.

"Well," says Hidan, "Plan A is to convince you to let me walk with you, because I'm coming with you. _Obviously_."

Ino gives him a look.

"Plan B is to cut off my head so that I'm interesting again, and come with you."

"Please don't," says Ino.

"Yeah I'd rather not, too," says Hidan, casting about as though looking for something sharp among the trees and grass. "I forgot to bring a goddamn knife, so I'm not really sure what I'd use to…"

"Is there a Plan C?" interrupts Ino before he attempts to saw off his head with a branch.

"There _is_ ," says Hidan.

He crowds in close to Ino and continues in a conspiratorial whisper. "Plan C is, if you kick up a fuss, I'm gonna pretend to go away, but really, I'll just follow you from a distance and come with you."

Ino can't help but laugh. "Shouldn't you, like, not have not told me about that last part?"

Hidan reflects deeply upon this remark. "Maybe. Are you gonna kick up a fuss, or…?"

"Yes," says Ino, turning away from him and striding down the path. "What am I supposed to do, waltz up to the guards at Konoha's gates and say, oh, hey, I found this ninja from another village and it's kinda cute, can I keep it?"

" _Kinda_ _cute_?" repeats Hidan. "I think you meant dead sexy. And I'm _useful_. I can kill things."

"Konoha is a shinobi village," says Ino. "I promise we have a _lot_ of people who can kill things."

"But can _they_ be killed?" says Hidan.

"Well, yes..."

"Well I can't. 'Cuz I'm immortal. Come on, that's, like, a huge asset. Lemme do an interview or something."

"An interview," repeats Ino. She shakes her head, imagining herself trying to explain that one to the hokage.

"Hey. I can slaughter your enemies _and_ use them in my ritual. Obvious win-win situation here, angel."

Ino shakes her head again and they walk on in silence, except for Hidan occasionally shadowboxing falling leaves, presumably to show her his amazing skills.

"Hey, this is cool," comments Hidan after they have walked for a while. "Plan A is working so far."

"Maybe I'm walking you into a trap," says Ino.

"Pff," says Hidan. "Like you need a fuckin' trap to catch me."

He snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her close and kisses her cheek. Ino pretends to push him away, but she doesn't really try hard, because right now he's making her feel like a schoolgirl, all giggles and blushes… _blushes_. Giggling is bad enough, but Ino never, _never_ blushes.

It's so stupid that this one little kiss on the cheek should be able to make her pulse race like this, but it's what he does to her, and oh barf, she really likes it.

"I also have a plan D," whispers Hidan in her ear.

"Let me guess," says Ino.

Hidan wiggles his eyebrows and leaps behind her and indulges in some exaggerated hip-thrusts against her butt. And Ino leans back and tangles her hands into his hair, and then the hip-thrusts change into some really quite sensual grinding, and he lifts her hair away and kisses the side of her neck, and Ino makes a sound of approval and slips a hand behind her to feel his package, and she finds that he is indeed packing.

"Seriously?" says Ino, giggling ( _again_ ). "Here? Right now?"

"No-one to witness us but Jashin," says Hidan, "and maybe birds or some shit."

"We're moving, Hidan," says Ino responsibly, though she's almost-kind-of tempted.

" _Fine_ ," says Hidan, adjusting his pants with a long-suffering sigh. "I'll just fuckin' point the way, shall I?"

"That's… quite the compass," says Ino, looking at the bulge and determinedly resisting the urge to continue to play with it.

"It points me to where I need to be," says Hidan, swivelling his hips around like his dick is some kind of dowsing rod. Predictably, the rod points straight at Ino, who shakes her head and tries not to laugh.

They walk on, and Hidan's boner subsides, and they make their way through the autumnal forest at a good clip. Leaves swirl around them in careless loops and crunch under their feet and the air smells earthy and rich with summer's end.

Hidan variously holds Ino's hand, his amulet, then her hand again, which makes her smile in spite of herself.

"Wait," says Hidan suddenly.

"…What?"

Hidan pauses, as though he's trying to decipher an unknown sensation occurring somewhere in his chest.

"I think I'm _happy_ ," says Hidan.

This is so unexpected and innocent that Ino isn't sure what to say. She looks at him askance.

"Is this a... new thing for you?" asks Ino. It seems like a weird question to ask, because who has never been happy before, but then again, Hidan is a pretty weird guy.

"Yeah…"

"Oh," says Ino. "Doesn't Jashin make you happy?"

Hidan thinks. It takes him a long time to formulate his answer. "…Jashin _fulfills_ me. It's different. You know? I dedicated my life, my – fuck, my _everything_ – to him, and he's made it worth it, again and again. And that was enough, for a long time…"

Ino looks up at him, because it feels like the sentence hasn't quite been completed.

Their eyes meet, and his are suddenly full of things that he doesn't know how to say, and Ino's heart beats a little faster and she doesn't know why.

"I must've done something right," says Hidan. He holds her hand to his chest, so that her fingers and his fingers are entwined with his amulet. "Because he put you in my life…"

Why does it feel strangely like the world has stopped breathing?

Ino feels lightheaded, almost enough to be called dizzy, only it's not quite that, it's something else, a slight euphoria that is alien to her, and yet, she's heard about it, she thinks, if this is what it feels like…?

And oh god – now he's got that look that Ino has seen so many times before, that impending declaration of love look, that I'm-giving-you-my-heart-please-don't-crush-it look, that look of eminent vulnerability and despair, because he knows he's in deep now…

"And you're… angel, you're just…"

He trails off. His warm hand on hers feels like it might be shaking a bit, from a fear that he is very right to have, considering that this is Ino, and he knows, he _knows_ what she does with the hearts of men. And yet here he is, giving his to her, which is probably the most foolish and crazy thing he's ever done in a life filled with foolish and crazy things.

Except, perhaps it is not so foolish, because, with a sudden thrill, Ino realizes that she does not feel like running away. In fact, her heart feels peculiarly full, and it is not an unpleasant sensation.

She pulls his hands to her chest. "Hidan?"

He is utterly lost in her eyes. And Ino knows that doesn't only own this one's heart, she also owns his soul.

Ino squeezes his hands.

"…What?" says Hidan dreamily.

"I thought I told you not to fall in love with me."

"Can't not," he breathes. "Your fault."

"But what about Jashin?"

"What about him?"

"I don't think he'd approve of all of this non-slaughter…"

"He does. In a thousand ways, angel," says Hidan. He leans his forehead against hers and conviction makes his eyes bright. "He sent you to piece me together, he put you in my dreams, he put you in my prayers… fuck, he gave you my amulet, that was some kind of miracle… you're my goddamn angel."

He presses a kiss to her forehead, and it's the sweetest, mushiest damn thing, and Ino kind of just wants to die right now. And she blushes _again_ and she feels too shy to meet his eyes, like a girl on her first date, and she has some serious butterflies going on in her tummy which contribute to this interesting feeling that she's somehow floating.

His lips find hers, gently, and the kiss takes her breath away even if they've kissed a lot and they've made out and they've slept together and god – why does he do this to her…?

"I need you to tell Jashin something for me," says Hidan, staring straight ahead and appearing to collect himself.

"What is it?" asks Ino dazedly.

He squeezes her hands to his chest, makes brief eye contact, stares at the trees, takes a breath, takes a bigger breath.

"Tell him I – tell him I love his angel and I'll do anything for her, and I'll protect her from the bullshit of this world, forever. If she'll let me."

And then he just stares at her with that violet gaze, with a strength of feeling and devotion that makes her knees weak.

And Ino feels a little like she's melting inside, and a little like she can fly, and a little like her heart wants to burst. And she suspects that this may all be a little bit of falling in love.

"Wonder-girl?" says Hidan, finally noticing Ino's unfocused stare.

"Oh god," says Ino, pressing her fingers to her warm cheeks and turning away from him. "I am in so much trouble..."

He is, of course, oblivious to her sudden realization. "What?"

"I think I…"

"You what? You think you what?"

" _Nothing_ ," says Ino, because she is not ready, because this can't be happening to her, she can't be in love, not with _him_ , what did she do to deserve this, god damn it all to _hell_.

Ino stares at Hidan, who is still looking at her expectantly, and she realizes that she still owes him an answer.

"Okay," says Ino.

"Okay… what?"

"Okay, I'll let you. You can come with me."

He does a double-take at her. "…Really?"

"Yes."

Hidan turns away with a very stoic face, then, when his back is to Ino, he does a few vigorous victory fist pumps.

"…So," says Hidan, turning towards her again, just as stoically. "What you're saying is, I took for-fucking-ever coming up with like six different plans, for no good reason."

"Well," says Ino, "I don't think that they're _all_ unusable."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," says Ino. "We can still go to Plan D, later."

"You know," says Hidan, slipping his arm around her waist. "I _really_ like that idea."

They walk on along the sunlit path, very much _together_ now. And maybe she's an angel, and maybe he's a priest, but right now they're just two idiots kind of in love with each other when they really shouldn't be. He squeezes her tightly to him and looks at her and says he's the luckiest fucking guy, praise Jashin, and she looks up at him and smiles that smile that dazzles him and she feels like she might actually be the lucky one here. Because she has been loved by many men, but here at her side is a man who loves her with a love more deep and true than any of those who came before him, a love simultaneously so mortal and so spiritual that it's a good thing he was already a little crazy because otherwise…

He kisses her and she kisses him and they walk on. And this could be everything or nothing at all; this could be the best thing that ever happened to them or the biggest mistake of their lives; it could be the path to heaven or one of many roads to hell, and, really, there's only one way to find out.

VVV

 **The end.**

 **(Or, perhaps, the very beginning.)**


End file.
